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Details / Information for Nose Ornament with Serpents and Long-necked Birds

Nose Ornament with Serpents and Long-necked Birds

c. 100–300 CE
Measurements
Overall: 7.6 x 13.9 cm (3 x 5 1/2 in.)
Weight: 16.91 g (0.6 oz.)
Public Domain
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Location
232 Andean

Description

A crucial element of Moche royal regalia was the nose ornament, whose imagery varies from benign to predatory. One ornament here depicts a human head, perhaps a ruler’s portrait, flanked by birds that attack human victims. In another, two supernatural decapitators brandish knives over a row of severed human heads. The third is an elegant composition that combines serpents with long-necked water birds. The Moche were among the Andes’ most inventive metalsmiths, and they developed many complex techniques for joining and enriching the surfaces of metals, which they usually worked by hammering rather than casting. The gold-and-silver ornaments were made by first joining gold and silver sheets through heating and hammering. Then came the relief decoration, followed by the selective removal of metal along the joins. Finally, the ornament was trimmed and polished.
A symmetrical nose ornament features a central, notched silver oval. Two gold serpents face each other below the oval, their bodies curling up and into spirals flanking the oval and decorated with a pattern of radiating circles. Below the snakes curves a row of four silver birds in profile and facing in, two on each side. They have long, curving necks and wings sitting at their sides.

Nose Ornament with Serpents and Long-necked Birds

c. 100–300 CE

Peru, North Coast, Moche culture (50–800 CE), early Intermediate Period

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