Article suitable for older students

An Aztec obsidian mirror discovered in Taiwan

3rd Sep 2021

Mexicolore contributor Kuo, Shaw Yang

We never imagined, after receiving a brief note as a Feedback comment on our main entry on obsidian mirrors (‘See and Be Seen...’, link below) by a Taiwanese medical studies graduate about the discovery of a Mesoamerican obsidian mirror in Taiwan, that Kuo, Shaw Yang would go on to provide us with this detailed and carefully researched article about this unique object. We are sincerely grateful to him. Kuo, Shaw Yang graduated from Taipei Medical University, school of medical laboratory science. He has a great passion for world history and has read extensively about Asian art history. We wish him well in his future career...

The collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei City, Taiwan, mainly consists of treasures from the Qing emperors (the Last Dynasty of China), and includes a significant portion of the emperor’s personal collection, ranging from 10,000 antique paintings, calligraphy, bronzes, jades, and porcelain to an encyclopaedic library of 60,000 books. It’s a humungous number of objects by any standard, and even though all the objects are individually documented, not all are fully understood. Every now and then something mysterious is found in the store rooms and ends up being examined under the spotlight...

From 2014-2015, the museum curators prepared for a new exhibition to showcase the appreciation, mounting, and use of mirrors by members of the Qing imperial court. The exhibition, which ran until 2017, was titled ‘Reflections of the Emperor: The Collection and Culture of Mirrors at the Qing Court’ (pic 2), and presented a selection of ancient mirrors from the Han to Ming dynasties once in the Qing imperial collection. In the Museum’s store rooms, however, the curators found something very different, odd, amazing - something which, according to the Curator, Dr. Wu, Hsiao-yun, ‘for a long time museum staff believed was made of quartz and thought was “made in China”’; something which, she told Mexicolore, ‘has an incredible life story’.

What they found was a black stone mirror, kept in a beautiful silk pouch. Mysterious it certainly was, since ancient Chinese mirrors were usually made of bronze, but this black mirror was obviously different. ‘What is it made of? Why is it labelled as jade but also as smoky quartz? Who collected this? Where is it originally from?’ While many questions emerged, so began the quest for more answers. Luckily, there was a lead: two imperial poems by two different emperors from the past, who gave us their thoughts on this black mirror in their own words. Both poems express the emperor’s admiration for the mirror’s beautiful qualities. Imperial poems, incidentally, are official archives and accounts that researchers can study like emperors’ diaries.

In the imperial poem by Emperor Qianlong ‘In Praise of a Black Jade Mirror’, he writes:-
’Buried long ago in the deep (underground or in deep storage), it is unrecognised by people (of today). It is black (dark and crystal clear) like a mirror, it has a precious-white texture like fat. A remarkable black jade-like stone of great value, capable of revealing (like a mirror) the true nature of a person, even beyond their own understanding (awareness).’ (In Confucianism the ideal educated man is compared to an ideal jade). Incidentally, it has always been a cultural norm in China to call any stone of great aesthetics ‘jade’, even if they know it isn’t.

Emperor Qianlong wrote his appreciation of its beauty in close detail, not only about the characteristics of the deep black colour, but also the cloudy and thread-like milk-white texture of impurities in the mirror. Unlike today where most of us see objects from behind glass in a museum, you could imagine the emperor holding the mirror in his own hands, feeling the cold, smooth polished surface while looking ‘into’ the black mirror and observing its different appearances from different angles and lighting (pic 5).
In the second imperial poem by Emperor Daoguang ‘In Praise of a Black Jade Mirror’, written in 1822CE, the emperor admires the mirror’s aesthetic in these terms:-
’(Like) stars sunken into the ocean deep, (like) crepuscular rays that darken (and conceal).’

According to documents from the Qing court, the mirror was in the court at the latest by the seventeenth century. A small hole stands out at one end and was probably for attaching a handle.
Like every treasure it has its treasure case. Museum staff say that the textile that wraps mysterious objects found in the collection often tells the story better than the object itself. Let’s take a look at the silk brocade pouch that protected the mirror. This brilliant yellow silk pouch embroidered with a roundel motif of ‘Dragons chasing a flaming pearl’ (pic 6) directly shows us how much the emperor valued this mirror, matching the complimentary content from the two imperial poems.
Though this pouch might not be eye-catching at first, albeit not having multicolour textiles nor jewellery sowed onto it, we should simply see it from a different perspective: something that is important doesn’t have to be fancy and full of pomp, it can still be elegant and refined. The cultured people of the imperial court could read into its symbols and fine fabric.

Symbols such as the following were reserved for imperial use:-
1. Dragons, especially dragons with five claws on each limb, were a sign of the emperor, the son of heaven himself and could only be used to represent him.
2. Similarly, this bright yellow colour was used only to represent the emperor or the heavens in rituals.
Auspicious symbols included:-
1. A flaming pearl, associated with wish-granting powers.
2. A scene of dragons, peaceful and playful, chasing a flaming pearl.
3. Flowers (lotus flower) drifting in the sky.

In emperor Daoguang’s poem there is also an important side note which refers in part as follows: In 1657CE, the 14th year of emperor Shunzhi’s reign, Jesuit Johann Adam Schall von Bell, under the emperor’s order, identified the mirror as being made of ‘Ba Sa Le Te’ *.
We know today that, in early global exchanges, the Catholic church in Rome was sending Jesuits as diplomatic missionaries to the far east and China. By the 17th century Qing dynasty emperors had appointed many of them as important officials. When Emperor Shunzhi came across this mysterious and most likely foreign black mirror, Jesuit Johann Adam Schall von Bell was the ideal candidate to consult, being already Director of Astronomy at the Imperial Observatory and having translated many books on natural science topics (including geology) for the court.

After analysing the written context, the curators gave the black mirror a lab test. Then, on the 10th of August 2015, every staff member at the museum’s lab nervously waited while the results slowly appeared on the monitor. ‘Bingo!’ said the director of the museum’s laboratory, Dr. Tung-Ho Chen, as he confirmed in full confidence that the mirror was truly made of obsidian, not jade (as in the imperial poems) or smoky quartz (as per the museum’s original labels).
Nephrite (jade) and smoky quartz (SiO2, a kind of silica mineral) have a crystal structure whereas volcanic glass like obsidian does not. Under Raman spectroscopy, results show the mirror is different from a known smoky quartz seal (pic 9).
Then the results of X-ray fluorescence (XRF) showed that major and minor trace elements mostly resemble Mesoamerican-originated obsidian.

Museum curators were amazed to discover this obsidian mirror. After searching across collections abroad, they found this mirror strikingly resembles Aztec obsidian mirrors in the British Museum, the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico city, the The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museo de América in Madrid (pic 10), although this mirror has a radius on average bigger than the other examples by 8-10 cm. With this comparison, they finally identified/rediscovered the origin and material of this mirror.
And all those puzzles that first confused the museum curators have mostly been solved, except for one: how did an Aztec obsidian mirror travel as far as the Forbidden City in China? Unfortunately, no-one knows for sure.

We can trace the side note of Daoguang’s poem to 1657CE, when the mirror was at least seen by Emperor Shunzhi and Jesuit Johann Adam Schall von Bell at the Qing court in China. A suggestion says it was most likely a gift from European travellers - possibly Jesuit missionaries - to the Qing court; another, that it was inherited from the previous Ming dynasty (Ming emperors are known to have had contact with explorers and merchants from Portugal and Spain).
* Observant readers will have spotted that the syllables ‘Ba Sa Le Te’ spell out ‘Basalt’ - a term first coined in 1546 by the famous Saxon scholar and founder of modern mining engineering, Gregorius Agricola to name the tough black natural rock that lies in extraordinary abundance in the land deep under Stolpen Castle in Saxony; as Dr. Chen indicates, it’s highly likely that von Bell, a fellow German, having learnt of the discovery of basalt (Germany’s ‘most beautiful natural wonder’) and of the engineering masterpiece - the driving of the deepest well on earth into basalt (pic 11) and construction of a water pump system to deliver fresh water to the castle - that was under way just when he left for China in 1618, would thus claim that the mirror was made of basalt. Von Bell even translated De re Metallica (1556CE) by Gregorius Agricola into Chinese for the Qing court. Both basalt and obsidian are volcanic rocks that went through a different cooling process. Both have high silica (SiO2) compositions (basalt 45%-55%, obsidian 75%).

But when did it arrive at the Qing court? In whose possession was it back in the Aztec empire? Which route did it travel through? Questions that can only be answered in the future.
In April 2021 this Aztec obsidian mirror was declared a National Important Artefact by the Minister of Culture of Taiwan. From now on, more and more people will recognise and cherish this mirror for what it truly is and for what great history it embodies.
It remains intriguing to think that mirrors in the cultures of the far east and China do resemble those of Mesoamerican cultures as being meaningful-religious objects capable of magic and transcendent powers with which to communicate with the gods...

Sources:-
• Exhibition ‘Reflections of the Emperor: The Collection and Culture of Mirrors at the Qing Court’ (2015)
• Emperor Qianlong (乾隆皇帝) ‘In Praise of a Black Jade Mirror’
• Emperor Daoguang ‘In Praise of a Black Jade Mirror’ 1822 CE
• Journey of a discovery of an obsidian mirror, Wu Hsiaoyun, NPM Monthly of Chinese Art, 2015 (no.391)
• Examination of a black stone mirror from the Qing court collection, Tung-Ho Chen, NPM Monthly of Chinese Art, 2015 (no.391).

Further details:-
Mirror basic stats: length 30.8cm, radius 26.1cm, thickness 1.0cm.
The mirror is the only object of Mesoamerican origin in the Qian Dynasty imperial collection known to date.
Johann Adam Schall von Bell 湯若望 (1591-1666CE)
Emperor Shunzhi 順治皇帝 (1638-1661CE)
Emperor Qianlong 乾隆皇帝 (1711-1799CE)
Emperor Daoguang (1782-1850CE).

Picture sources:-
• Pic 1: photo by and thanks to Kuo, Shaw Yang
• Pic 2: image downloaded from https://theme.npm.edu.tw/exh104/mirrors/en/en02.html
• Pic 3: photos downloaded from https://antiquities.npm.gov.tw/Utensils_Page.aspx?ItemId=50725
• Pix 4, 5, 6 & 12: graphic images kindly supplied by Kuo, Shaw Yang
• Pic 7: photo downloaded from https://theme.npm.edu.tw/exh104/mirrors/en/en01.html
• Pic 8 (L): image from China on Paper: European and Chinese Works from the Late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century edited by Marcia Reed and Paola Demattè (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007, p. 15) - from Wikipedia
• Pic 8 (R): photo from Wikipedia
• Pic 9: images kindly supplied by Dr. Wu, Hsiao-yun
• Pic 10: photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Pic 11: photo downloaded from https://www.burg-stolpen.org/en/stolpen-castle/basalt/
• Pic 13: photo kindly supplied by Kuo, Shaw Yang.

Aztec limerick no. 29 (ode to the obsidian mirror in China)
We know from the Emperor’s thoughts
That his sages thought it was quartz.
What we need to unravel
Is how did it travel
From Aztec to Qing royal courts?

Aztecs

Maya

An Aztec obsidian mirror discovered in Taiwan

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