Divine Hands: The Teotihuacan Great Goddess

Summary

Teotihuacan was the painted city. A key iconographic motif in the murals of residential compounds, such as Tetitla, is the Great Goddess, often shown in the act of hand-scattering. A variety of substances such as grain, liquids, and precious, green stones are pictured falling from the Goddess' open palm. The extensive corpus of representations of the goddess' hand-scattering identifies the hand, and in particular the female hand, as a locus for divinity.

The suggestion that the agency of the great goddess resides in her hands is based on the observation that the hand is the one part of the Goddess' body which performs actions. The repeat border design of Mural 1, Tetitla, shows the disembodied hand of the Goddess scattering grain and in between each hand is a Flat Two-Dimensional Knot. This knot is an important Classic Period Maya motif found on Maya monuments, architecture and ceramics. The juxtaposition of the motifs, hand and knot, is proposed as deliberate and therefore meaningful. Absent from the repertoire of Teotihuacan motifs, this knot motif offers a unique opportunity to re-evaluate the meaning of hand-scattering at Teotihuacan but also the presence of important Maya iconographic motifs at this great city.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Gestures Across a Continent: Hands, Communication and Meaning in the Ancient Americas

Keywords

Spatial Coverage