Superbly crafted in the shape of a serpent ready to strike, this labret—a type of plug inserted through a piercing below the lower lip—is a rare survival of what was once a thriving tradition of gold-working in the Aztec Empire. Gold, in Aztec belief, was teocuitlatl, a godly excrement, closely associated with the sun’s power, and ornaments made of it were worn by Aztec rulers and nobles. Historical sources describe a variety of objects made of gold, including a serpent labret sent by Hernán Cortés as a gift to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, yet nearly all of these objects were melted down at the time of the Conquest and shortly thereafter, converted to gold ingots for ease of transport and trade.
The serpent’s head features a powerful jaw with serrated teeth and two prominent fangs. Scales are represented in delicate relief on the underside of the lower jaw. A prominent snout with rounded nostrils rises above the maw of the serpent, and the eyes are surmounted by a pronounced supraorbital plate terminating in curls. On the crown of the head, a ring of ten small spheres and three loops rendered using the technique of false filigree represents a feather headdress with beads. The bifurcated tongue, ingeniously cast as a moveable piece, could be retracted, or swung from side to side, perhaps moving with the wearer’s movements. The sinuous form of the serpent’s body attaches to a cylinder or basal plug ringed with a band of tiny spheres and a band of wavelike spirals. The plain, extended flange would have held the labret in place within the wearer’s mouth.
Labrets, called tentetl in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, were manifestations of political power. The Codex Ixtlilxochitl, an early colonial-period manuscript now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, includes a portrait of the ruler Nezahualcoyotl in full warrior attire, complete with a gold raptor labret. Nezahualcoyotl was the lord of Texcoco, one of the three cities that formed the Triple Alliance, the union at the core of the Aztec Empire formed by the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, the Alcolhua of Texcoco, and the Tepaneca of Tlacopan. The Aztec title for the royal office was huey tlahtoani, or "great speaker," and the adornment of the mouth was highly symbolic. According to Patrick Hajovsky, a scholar of Aztec art, labrets were the visual markers of the eloquent, truthful speech expected of royalty and the nobility. Crafted from a sacred material, a labret such as this would have underscored the ruler’s divinely sanctioned authority, and asserted his position as the individual who could speak for an empire. Not surprisingly, therefore, the insertion of a labret was part of a ruler’s accession ceremony.
Labrets were also closely associated with military prowess. Specific types of labrets were awarded to warriors based on certain achievements. Gold ornaments, however, appear to have been restricted to royalty and the highest ranks of the nobility, although on occasion gold ornaments could be given by the king as gifts to provincial rulers. Because of its imperviousness to decay, gold would have been an appropriate material to suggest the enduring power of rulers. Such labrets would not have been worn on a daily basis, but rather as part of ceremonial or battle attire donned on specific occasions. Worn on ritual occasions and on the battlefield, this labret, like its wearer, a serpent ready to strike its prey, would have been a terrifying sight.
Serpents have been a favored subject in Mesoamerican art from at least the second millennium B.C. As creatures that could move between different realms, such as earth, water, and sky, they were considered particularly appropriate symbols for rulers and mythological heroes such as Quetzalcoatl, the legendary "feathered serpent." The combination of the curled eyebrow and snout, along with the feathered headdress, may mark this creature as Xiuhcoatl, a mighty fire serpent conceived of as an animate weapon of the Aztec sun god, Huitzilopochtli.
Although gold working developed relatively late in Mesoamerica (after AD 600), metalsmiths developed innovative approaches in different regions and produced works of great artistry and technical sophistication. Oaxaca, one of the major sources for gold, was also long considered one of the primary centers for the production of gold objects. Recent research by Leonardo López Luján and José Luis Ruvalcaba Sil, however, has revealed an important gold working tradition in the Basin of Mexico. Small cast gold bells and ornaments of hammered sheet metal have been excavated at Mexico City’s Templo Mayor, or Great Temple, the sacred center at the heart of the Aztec Empire. The finds there include a bifurcated tongue fashioned from sheet gold, and cast-gold bells that once adorned a wolf and an eagle, animals that were sacrificed and placed in one of the Templo Mayor’s dedicatory caches.
Outside of the Templo Mayor finds, the majority of the Aztec works in gold that have survived—including this labret—are ornaments for the royal or noble body. Most Aztec labrets are plain obsidian or greenstone plugs, although exceptional examples were made in the form of raptors such as eagles. Another serpent labret, possibly from Ejutla, Oaxaca, is now in the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
This serpent labret, perhaps the finest Aztec gold ornament to survive the crucibles of the sixteenth century, is an exceedingly rare testament to the brilliance of ancient Mexican metalsmiths. Monumental sculpture in stone, ceramic vessels, and other more durable forms of cultural production shed light on key aspects of Aztec ritual and daily life. But gold, in its infinite ability to be transformed, melted and re-worked, could always be remade to suit current needs, and thus rarely survives from antiquity. Though small, this masterpiece opens a window into Aztec culture at the very highest level, a world almost entirely obliterated when Hernán Cortés arrived on the shores of Mexico in 1519.
