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Mirror Back with Great Goddess
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
An important female deity commands the watery scene on the back of this mirror. The face, bordered by ear ornaments and partially hidden by a nose ornament, appears beneath a huge headdress with the fringed eyes and curled proboscis of an abstract butterfly. The deity rests on a shell-studded water band and two adoring humans offer flowers or incense in a bag. Mirrors served as costume ornaments and perhaps were used in rituals to divine the unknown.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineMirror Back with Great Goddess, 400–550 CE. Guatemala(?), Escuintla, Teotihuacán style, Classic Period. Slate, pigment; other side originally inlaid with polished pyrite mirror; overall: 20.1 x 0.2 cm (7 15/16 x 1/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, James Albert and Mary Gardiner Ford Memorial Fund, 1989.65
