We must say a word about the Museum. It is a building just out of the
cathedral plaza, and is approached through a pretty courtyard filled
with palms and flowering shrubs. But within is the most melancholy
medley and muddle which it is possible to conceive. With opportunities
unexampled, with a wealth of treasures, the very finest of all Aztec and
Mayan relics, the curators, if one must misuse the word so sadly, have
proved themselves about as fit to arrange and govern a national museum
as schoolboys. There is literally no order; apparently no intelligence
at all has been exercised in the cataloguing of the exhibits; and the
elementary precaution of labelling each object with its place and date
of finding has been almost entirely ignored. Thus you come across a case
of ancient pottery obviously of all ages and from all parts of the
Republic, and this is called "Ancient Aztec Pottery," which a large part
of it is certainly not. Case after case witnesses to this ineptitude.
Nothing is labelled; or if it is, the label is patently incorrect. At
the door stand two cases facing each other. One is called "Forged
Pottery"; the other, "Genuine Pottery." Perhaps the egregious gentlemen
who have laboured to spoil what might have been one of the most
remarkable collections of an ancient civilisation existing will be
surprised to hear that they have got forged pottery in the genuine case
and vice versa. A typical catalogue entry is "279. _Fragments of Toltec
column_"; or "281 _to_ 283. _Three stone blocks. It has been supposed
that they formed part of gigantic caryatides_"; or "286. _El Indio
Triste. Strange human sculpture of melancholy aspect_"; or "93. _Aztec
Goddess Citlalinicue, according to Señor Troncoso. A square flat stone
with interesting reliefs on its two chief faces._" How illuminating to
be sure!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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