The Teotihuacan Ocelot or ''Teotihuacán Ocelot'' is the name of an alabaster sculpture of a feline found at the ancient Mesoamerican site of Teotihuacan, central Mexico. Discovered in the late nineteenth century, it was purchased by the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It documen ...

in 1926.

Description

This unique sculpture is an offering vessel in the form of a recumbent ocelot. Carved from a single piece of prestigious

alabaster Alabaster is a mineral or rock that is soft, often used for carving, and is processed for plaster powder. Archaeologists and the stone processing industry use the word differently from geologists. The former use it in a wider sense that include ...

, the figure reflects the geometric style and pattern of contemporary funerary masks and architecture from Teotihuacan. The eyes would have once been inlaid with shells or precious stones and the depression on the feline's back would have held the temple offering - some have conjectured that this may have included human

heart The heart is a muscular organ in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon dioxide to ...

s removed for

ritual sacrifice Sacrifice is the offering of material possessions or the lives of animals or humans to a deity as an act of propitiation or worship. Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and possibly exi ...

s.British Museum Highlights

Provenance

The feline figure was found by a labourer at the foot of the

Pyramid of the Sun The Pyramid of the Sun is the largest building in Teotihuacan, and one of the largest in Mesoamerica. It is believed to have been constructed about 200 AD. Found along the Avenue of the Dead, in between the Pyramid of the Moon and the Ciudadel ...

in Teotihuacan in 1889. It was initially offered to the Museo Nacional, but as they would not buy it, it was sold to an English traveller. The sculpture was eventually bought by the British Museum in 1926, with support from the Christy Fund. Only one other similar calcite statuette of a jaguar has been unearthed at the site, which is now in the Mexican national collection.

Bibliography

*C. McEwan, Ancient Mexico in the British Museum (London, The British Museum Press, 1994) *C. Berlo (ed.), Art, ideology and the city of Teotihuacan: A Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, 8 and 9 October 1988 (Washington, D.C., Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1992) *K. Berrin and E. Pasztory (eds.), Teotihuacan: Art from the city of the gods (Thames and Hudson, 1993) *E. Pasztory, Teotihuacan: an experiment in living (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1997)

References

{{reflist Artefacts from Africa, Oceania and the Americas in the British Museum Mesoamerican artifacts Ethnographic objects in the British Museum Teotihuacan 1889 archaeological discoveries category:Sculptures of the British Museum Mexico–United Kingdom relations