Stone head of an old man

Head of an old man, Mexica-Aztec, c. 1325-1521 CE, volcanic stone, height 15.8 cms., Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Paris.

The Mexican who managed to escape death from war and from illness (and from doctors) and who reached a sufficiently advanced age to be counted among the huehuetque, the elders who played so important a part in family and political life, could look forward to a peaceable and honoured existence in his last years.

Quote from Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest by Jacques Soustelle, 1961, Stanford University Press, p. 198.

Photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore.