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Reuters - September 24, 2007
Ancient Mexicans and Egyptians who never met and lived
centuries and thousands of miles apart both worshiped
feathered-serpent deities, built pyramids and developed a
365-day calendar, a new exhibition shows. Billed as the world's
largest temporary archeological showcase, Mexican archeologists
have brought treasures from ancient Egypt to display alongside
the great indigenous civilizations of Mexico for the first time.
The exhibition, which boasts a five-tonne, 3,000-year-old
sculpture of Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II and stone carvings from
Mexican pyramid at Chichen Itza, aims to show many of the
similarities of two complex worlds both conquered by Europeans
in invasions 1,500 years apart. "There are huge cultural
parallels between ancient Egypt and Mexico in religion,
astronomy, architecture and the arts. They deserve to be
appreciated together," said exhibition organizer Gina Ulloa, who
spent almost three years preparing the 35,520 square-feet (3,300
meter-square) display.
The exhibition, which opened at the weekend in the northern
Mexican city of Monterrey, shows how Mexican civilizations
worshiped the feathered snake god Quetzalcoatl from about 1,200
BC to 1521, when the Spanish conquered the Aztecs.
From 3,000 BC onward Egyptians often portrayed their gods,
including the Goddess of the Pharaohs Isis, in art and sculpture
as serpents with wings or feathers. The feathered serpent and
the serpent alongside a deity signifies the duality of human
existence, at once in touch with water and earth, the serpent,
and the heavens, the feathers of a bird," said Ulloa. Egyptian
sculptures at the exhibition -- flown to Mexico from ancient
temples along the Nile and from museums in Cairo, Luxor and
Alexandria - show how Isis' son Horus was often represented with
winged arms and accompanied by serpents. Cleopatra, the last
Egyptian queen before the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC, saw
herself as Isis and wore a gold serpent in her headpiece.
Uncanny Similarities
In the arts, Mexico's earliest civilization, the Olmecs, echo
Egypt's finest sculptures. Olmec artists carved large man-jaguar
warriors that are similar to the Egyptian sphinxes on display
showing lions with the heads of gods or kings. The seated statue
of an Egyptian scribe carved between 2465 and 2323 BC shows
stonework and attention to detail that parallels a seated stone
sculpture of an Olmec lord. There is no evidence the Olmecs and
Egyptians ever met.
Shared traits run to architecture, with Egyptians building
pyramids as royal tombs and the
Mayans and
Aztecs following suit with pyramids as places of sacrifice to
the gods. While there is no room for pyramids at the exhibition
-- part of the Universal Forum of Cultures, an international
cultural festival held in Barcelona in 2004 -- organizers say it
is the first time many of pieces have left Egypt. They include
entire archways from Nile temples, a bracelet worn by Ramses II
and sarcophagi used by the pharaohs. Mexico has also brought
together Aztec, Mayan and Olmec pieces from across the country.
Zazacatyl
Ancient City Found in Mexico; Shows Olmec Influence National
Geographic, January 26, 2007
A 2,500-year-old city influenced by the Olmecs often referred
to as the 'mother culture' of Mesoamerica has been discovered
hundreds of miles away from the Olmecs' Gulf coast territory,
archaeologists said.
Mexico monolith may cast new light on Mesoamerica
Reuters, May 8, 2006, Mexico City
A carved monolith unearthed in Mexico may
show that the Olmec civilization, one of the oldest in the
Americas, was more widespread than thought or that another
culture thrived alongside it 3,000 years ago. Findings at
the newly excavated Tamtoc archeological site in the
north-central state of San Luis Potosi may prompt scholars
to rethink a view of Mesoamerican history which holds that
its earliest peoples were based in the south of Mexico. "It
is a very relevant indicator of an Olmec penetration far to
the north, or of the presence of a new group co-existing
with the Olmecs," said archeologist Guillermo Ahuja, who led
a government team excavating the site for the past five
years. Tamtoc, located about 550 miles (885 kilometers)
northeast of Mexico City, will open to the public this week,
while experts including linguists, historians, ethnographers
and others study findings from the site to confirm their
origins.
The Olmecs are considered the mother culture of
pre-Hispanic Mexico. Ruins of Olmec centers believed to have
flourished as early as 1200 B.C. have been found in the Gulf
Coast states of Veracruz and Tabasco, with only scattered
artifacts found elsewhere. Workers restoring a canal at the
site stumbled on the stone monolith. It appears to represent
a lunar calendar and contains three human figures and other
symbols in relief. "At 25 feet (7.6 meters) long, 13 feet (4
meters) high, 16 inches (40 centimeters) thick and weighing
more than 30 tonnes, it may date to as early as 900 BC,"
Ahuja said. Experts will try to interpret the icons to learn
more about the artists and their culture. "They are new
symbols in Mesoamerica. At Tamtoc, scientists found evidence
of an advanced civilization, with a hydraulic system, canals
and other technology, making it the oldest and most advanced
center of its time found in what later became Huasteco
Indian region," Ahuja said. "It is the first and only
Huasteco City we know. The 330-acre (133-hectare) complex
has three plazas and more than 70 buildings and may indicate
that the Olmecs migrated northward and mingled with other
peoples there."
Earliest New World writing revealed, Olmec December 2002, New
Scientist
The discovery of a fist-sized ceramic cylinder and
fragments of engraved plaques has pushed back the earliest
evidence of writing in the Americas by at least 350 years to
650 BC. Rolling the cylinder printed symbols indicating
allegiance to a king, a striking difference from the Old
World, where the oldest known writing was used for keeping
records by the first accountants. Archaeologists uncovered
the cylinder and fingernail-sized fragments among debris
from an ancient festival at San Andres, an Olmec town on the
coastal plain of the Mexican state of Tabasco. Carbon dating
of layers in the rubbish heap gave age of the artefacts.
The next-oldest writing from the region is on a monument
at a site of the Zapotec culture 300 kilometres to the west.
But its date is poorly constrained, to sometime between 300
BC and 200 AD. Three later cultures in the same area used
similar writing, the well-known Mayan, and the lesser-known
Isthmain and Oxacan. The cylinder shows two glyphs linked by
lines to the mouth of a bird, giving the impression the
glyphs are being spoken. One is "ajaw," meaning "king," and
the other "three ajaw", a day in the sacred 260-day calendar
used throughout the region for over a millennium. Later
cultures used similar lines to show speech by people as well
as by animals. When covered with ink or paint, the roller
printed the bird and symbols on cloth or people's bodies.
The date probably was the king's name, a common practice at
the time."It's a kind of royal seal, used in decoration,"
Mary Pohl, an anthropologist at Florida State University in
Tallahassee, told New Scientist. People in San Andres
probably wore it "to show their fealty to the king" who
resided at the main Olmec city of La Venta nearby.
The Olmec were the first American culture with a distinct
ruling class, and Pohl believes they developed writing for
rituals and rulers. Later Mesoamerican writing retained the
links to kings and rituals, including the sacred calendar.
Pohl says that writing could have originated at the start of
the first Olmec culture in 1300 BC, but no evidence has
survived. In contrast, Old World writing is far older and
traces back to tokens placed in clay envelopes to keep
account of animals or other possessions. By about 3000 BC,
symbols written on tablets replaced the tokens, becoming the
world's first writing.
Scientists Solve Jade Source Mystery
June 2002, World Scientist
Since the 18th century, collectors, geologists and
archaeologists have sought the answer to a frustrating
mystery: The ancient Olmecs fashioned statues out of
striking blue-green jade, but the stone itself was nowhere
to be found in the Americas. Now scientists believe they
have discovered the source, a mother lode of jade in
Guatemala that could tell much about ancient American
civilizations and about the formation of the continent where
they lived. Ever since Alexander von Humboldt began
collecting jade in Latin America in the 18th century, Olmec-style
statuettes and axes, crafted more than two millennia ago,
had been found from Mexico to Costa Rica. But never had that
kind of jade been seen naturally in any quantity in the
area. Then in 1999, Russell Seitz, a geophysicist who had
spent 23 years searching for the source of Olmec jade, took
his fiancee to the colonial city of Antigua in central
Guatemala. On the roof of a store, he found jade that was
vastly different from the opaque jade he had seen in Mexico
and Central America, and it was identical to the translucent
blue-green stones so coveted by the Olmecs, who lived in
central and southern Mexico from 1000-400 B.C.
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