The use of mirrors in Mesoamerican culture was associated with the idea that they served as portals to a realm that could be seen but not interacted with.Fitzsimmons 2009, pp.96–97. Mirrors in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica were fashioned from stone and served a number of uses, from the decorative to the divinatory.Miller and Taube 1993, 2003, p. 114. An ancient tradition among many Mesoamerican cultures was the practice of divination using the surface of a bowl of water as a mirror. At the time of the Spanish conquest this form of divination was still practiced among the Maya, Aztecs and Purépecha. In Mesoamerican art, mirrors are frequently associated with pools of liquid; this liquid was likely to have been water.Healy and Blainey 2011, p. 241.Healy and Blainey speculate that this liquid may have been mercury. Quantities of liquid mercury ranging from have been recovered from elite tombs or ritual caches at six Maya sites. Healy and Blainey 2011, p. 241.
Early mirrors were fashioned from single pieces of iron ore, polished to produce a highly reflective surface. By the Classic period, mosaic mirrors were being produced from a variety of ores, allowing for the construction of larger mirrors. Mosaic pyrite mirrors were crafted across large parts of Mesoamerica in the Classic period, particularly at Teotihuacan and throughout the Maya region. Pyrite degrades with time to leave little more than a stain on the mirror back by the time it is excavated. This has led to the frequent misidentification of pyrite mirror backs as paint palettes, painted discs or pot lids. By the Postclassic period obsidian mirrors became increasingly common.
Function and symbolism of mirrors in Mesoamerica Far from being a personal cosmetic accessory, mirrors in Mesoamerica were divinatory aids and also formed a part of elite status costume. Mirrors were viewed as metaphors for sacred caves and as conduits for supernatural forces; they were associated with fiery hearths and pools of water because of their bright surfaces. Mirrors were also closely associated with the sun. Mirrors were often used in pre-Columbian Mexico to reveal a person's destiny through divination.Olivier and López Luján 2009, p. 91. Among the Maya of the Classic period mirrors were a means of communication with otherworld entities, as depicted in scenes painted on ceramic vessels. Otherworld mirrors were believed to be the far side of earthly mirrors, and were owned and used by deities and other supernatural beings. In central Mexico in the Postclassic period, the world was metaphorically conceived as a huge circular mirror.
Fire
Mirrors were associated with fire in Mesoamerica, and representations of mirrors could take the form of flowers and be combined with representations of butterflies. Both butterflies and flowers were associated with fire in central Mexico from the Classic to Postclassic periods, with butterflies representing flames. The Olmecs of the Preclassic period fashioned concave mirrors that were capable of lighting fires.
Water Mirrors were also associated with water; an Early Classic mirror in the style of Teotihuacan was excavated at distant Guácimo area of the Limón province near the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. It included Teotihuacan imagery that was a stylised convention for representing bodies of water.Taube 1992, p. 189. Water imagery continued to be associated with mirrors in central Mexico right up to Aztec times.Taube 1992, pp.186-188. These representations of water-associated mirrors in Mesoamerican art apparently use the mirror to symbolise the surface of a pool of water. During the Classic Period mirrors were placed in bowls to symbolically represent bowls of water; examples are known from Teotihuacan and throughout the Maya area. Water-filled bowls have been used as mirrors for divinatory purposes right up to modern times in Mesoamerica and the American southwest. An incense burner from Early Classic Escuintla on the Guatemalan Pacific slope combines butterfly and water imagery. The mirror has flanking ears representing the wings of the butterfly that is rising from a water-filled bowl.
Jade A painted mural from Teotihuacan, now in the De Young Museum in San Francisco, has a representation of a mirror containing a glyph representing a piece of jade jewellery. Such jade pendants are depicted frequently in Teotihuacan art falling in streams. In the Maya region jade beads were frequently placed alongside mirrors in burials and offerings in the Classic and Postclassic periods.Taube 1992, pp.176–177. Although jade may have been placed alongside mirrors due to the high value of both to their Mesoamerican owners, it is equally likely that the association of jade with mirrors is due to jade being used in divinatory practices. Like mirrors, jade beads were used for scrying and were invested with supernatural powers.Taube 1992, p. 177. Jade also had an association with water.Miller and Taube 1993, 2003, p. 102.
Eyes and faces
Representations of mirrors in art from Classic period Teotihuacan and Guatemala's Pacific coastal region depict the mirror face using a glyph in the form of a reptile's eye, the meaning of which is not clear. The ringed eyes of the central Mexican rain god Tlāloc may have represented mirrors from representations at Teotihuacan in the Classic period right through to the Aztecs at the time of Spanish contact. In the , the Nahuatl word is used to refer to both the eye and mirrors. This association also existed among the Maya, the Tzotzil Maya phrase is used for the pupil or eye and means literally "mirror of the face" or "mirror of the eye". This association of mirrors with eyes may derive from the highly reflective eyes of the jaguar. Mirror stones were used to represent the eyes in sculptures from many Mesoamerican cultures.
Spiders From the Classic period mirrors began to be associated with spider webs, perhaps due to the network of lines on the surface of mosaic mirrors that developed at that time. Imagery associating mirrors with spiders and their webs is relatively frequently encountered at Teotihuacan. The association of mirrors with spiders continued right up to the Postclassic and beyond, with a polished gold Mixtec mirror back taking the form of a spider. The modern Huichol still associate mirrors with spider webs.
Sun Mirrors have been identified with the sun in Mesoamerica since the Preclassic period, when the Olmecs associated the two. The Maya maintained the same association throughout the Classic period,Taube 1992, p. 193. and the relationship between mirrors and the sun has persisted into modern times, with the Sierra Totonac of Mexico referring to the sun as Espejo Sol, "Mirror Sun". In the Postclassic period, the turquoise mirrors of the Toltecs and Aztecs represented the sun.
Mirrors in the Maya region
Mirrors have been found in almost every part of the Maya region, mostly in burials and ritual caches. They have been dated to all periods of Maya civilization from the Middle Preclassic (around 600 BC) right up to the Spanish conquest in the early 1520s. They reached the height of their production and use in the Maya highlands during the Early Classic, while most mirrors from the Maya lowlands date to the Late Classic. Maya mirrors were produced by exceptionally skilled artisans and were highly valued by the Maya elite. Production was likely to have been so specialised that they were made by high-status artisans dedicated to their manufacture, who may have been members of the aristocracy or even royalty.Healy and Blainey 2011, p. 231. Although hundreds of mirrors have been excavated in the Maya area, comparatively few mosaic mirrors have been recovered from lowland Maya sites. Large quantities of mirrors have been recovered from some highland sites, such as Kaminaljuyu and Nebaj in the Guatemalan Highlands. The high concentration of mirrors in a few highland sites probably indicates centres of production and distribution into the trade network.Healy and Blainey 2011, pp.229–230. It is likely that they were manufactured in the highlands and then were traded as finished objects to the Maya lowlands.
Most Maya mirrors were circular with occasional oval and square examples; they range in size from across while their thickness ranged from . It is likely that the outline of Maya mirrors was initially drawn with an instrument like a compass since many examples are almost perfectly circular. Most Maya mirrors were backed with slate and a few were backed with sandstone or ceramic, some may have been backed with shell. Most mirror backs were plain but a few bear ornately sculpted designs or hieroglyphic text. Some mirrors were framed with wood or bone, or a combination of the two, although these materials are poorly preserved in the archaeological record.Healy and Blainey 2011, p. 230. Some mirrors bear traces of stucco, which was probably painted, or cinnabar, a red mineral that is often found in association with elite burials in the Maya area. A mirror with hieroglyphic text on the back was excavated from Río Azul in the far north of the Petén Basin of Guatemala. Another mirror from Petén, found at Topoxte, has a circular band of text on the back that includes the phrase u-nen, meaning "his mirror".Healy and Blainey 2011, pp.230, 233. Mirrors with Maya glyphs on the back have been found as far away as Costa Rica, more than from the Maya heartland. Polygonal mirror pieces were glued to the backing with an unknown adhesive; on the whole, the iron ore polygons have not survived and have deteriorated to a rust-like residue coating the backing. In some cases ridged deposits of adhesive outline the shape of the vanished polygonal mosaic pieces.
Mirrors excavated from Maya tombs have been found placed near the head, the chest, the small of the back, the groin and the feet of the deceased. A few were placed on the floor of the tomb at some distance from the human remains. In Maya art, mirrors appear to be depicted as hand-held objects; sometimes they are depicted mounted on stands or held by dwarfs or servants in front of elite Maya individuals. Advances in the decipherment of Maya script have revealed the central function of mirrors as instruments for ritual scrying. This ritual scrying was the continuation of an ancient divinatory tradition with its ultimate origins in Preclassic shamanistic practices that had been formalised by the Maya priesthood. Mirrors were of considerable value within Maya society and their use was restricted to the elite.
History of Mesoamerican mirrors
Preclassic period