Statue of Coatlicue (National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City)

A colossal andesite statue of Coatlicue, the Aztec mother goddess, found in 1790 during street paving works in the main plaza of Mexico City and now on permanent display in the National Museum of Anthropology. The statue shows her wearing a skirt of writhing snakes and a necklace of human hearts, hands and skulls, her feet and hands set with claws. Her head is formed by two facing serpents, understood as blood spurting from her neck after her decapitation in the myth of Huitzilopochtli's birth. Some scholars, including Cecelia Klein, have argued the figure may represent a personified snake skirt rather than the goddess in full form; the atlas records the majority reading alongside that dissent. No inventory number is given on either record as read.