‘The Heart’ exhibition

Aware that the heart's symbolic power was central to Aztec culture, the curators gave the Aztecs centre stage in the exhibition, and borrowed a few iconic Aztec objects from museums on both sides of the Atlantic, including the British Museum, the National Anthropology Museum of Mexico City, and the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin.

Wellcome Collection is a 'mix of galleries, events, and meeting, reading and eating places'

The British Museum loaned its unique wooden-and-mosaic-handle and chalcedony-blade Aztec knife, along with a large stone offering vessel or 'cuauhxicalli', with its decorative bands of feathers and hearts and representation of '4-Movement' (the fifth and present world era). The majority of captive warriors taken in battle by the Aztecs met their end in ritual heart-extraction sacrifice ('tlacamictiliztli' in Náhuatl), in which the victim would be held by four priests face up over a large stone. A fifth priest would open the chest cavity with an obsidian blade (tecpatl) and extract the heart, to be offered to the Sun (Tonatiuh) and then placed in a special offering vessel - the cuauhxicalli.

Aztec sacrificial knife and a famous image from the Codex Magliabecchano

As the exhibition introduction says: 'The heart, widely understood as the place where life begins and ends, has always featured as a potent symbol in our religions, myths and rituals... [and] ...we remain reluctant to let go of the notion - deeply rooted in everyday language and imagery - that the heart is the home of our emotions and of our true character.'

Aztec stone cuauhxicalli - stone offering vessel - from the British Museum