The Aztec art-workers of the period immediately antedating the Spanish Conquest had attained a high order of skill in the difficult work of inlaying carefully cut and shaped bits of precious material so as to produce some form or design of symbolic or religious meaning. In judging the artistic merit of such work, we must always remember that the Aztec inlayers were only provided with rude and primitive tools and implements for the execution of their task, and extraordinary patience and application must have been necessary to complete some of the objects that have been preserved for us. This art seems only to have been cultivated in ancient Mexico and Central America, and perhaps Peru also; of the Mexican work some twenty-five examples have been saved. The Spaniards, shortly after their first landing, were given an opportunity to judge of the quality of this Aztec inlaying, for among the gifts sent by Montezuma to Cortés, were five such objects, a mask with incrustations of turquoise, so disposed as to figure two intertwined serpents; a crozier, also with turquoise mosaic and ending in a serpent’s head; a pair of large ear-rings of serpentine form decorated with the _chalchihuitl_ stone (perhaps nephrite or jadeite); a mitre of ocelot skin, surmounted by a large _chalchihuitl_, and also decorated with turquoise mosaic, and a staff of office with similar inlays. A serpent-mask answering to the description of one of Montezuma’s gifts is now in the British Museum and is in a fairly good state of preservation, although unfortunately the two serpent-heads have been lost. Evidently this mask was used in connection with the worship of Quetzalcoatl, the serpent-god, an incarnation of which deity the poor Aztecs at first believed Cortés to be.[554] [Illustration: By courtesy of Dr. Edward H. Thompson. THE SACRED WELL OF CHICHEN ITZA Wherein, according to tradition, human victims and votive offerings of great value were cast. ] Surpassing this mask in a certain strange and weird interest, and equalling it in artistic workmanship, is another most remarkable Aztec ceremonial mask, also in the British Museum Collection. The foundation of this is the front part of a human skull, and its outer surface has been covered with an incrustation of turquoise and jet mosaic in five alternate bands, the upper, middle and lower ones being of jet, while the two intermediate ones are of shaped pieces of turquoise; part of the nose has been removed and the space covered over by tablets of pink shell; protruding eyeballs are figured by convex disks of polished iron pyrites with a bordering of white shell; a number of the teeth have been broken out. Straps attached at the temples rendered it possible to bind this mask to the face of an idol, or for a priest of high rank to wear it on solemn ceremonial occasions.