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7 steps for 7 wonders!
Le Museum of the Americas – Auch offers its visitors to take a ticket for a time and space travel. The adventure does not end in the distance Pre-Columbian America, but extends into theEgypt of the Pharaohs to end at heart of Gascony.
Second step: The Fox Snake
Mochica culture (150 - 850 AD)
In the case of this censer representing a mythological animal, the fox snake, the iconography is very revealing of the religious conceptions of the ancient Andean civilizations.
The fusion of several animals, or even of a character and a mythical animal is to be put in relation with the shamanic practices of the high priests. Considered as smugglers between the world of the living and the world of ancestors, these priests had the faculty by trance to transform themselves into sacred animal and to enter in contact with the beyond.
Common to many Andean civilizations, we frequently find in the iconography three emblematic and strongly symbolic animals:
- the condor representing the sky;
- the underworld serpent;
- the jaguar the terrestrial world.
Here, the snake is associated with the fox. The belly of the vase takes up the wavy body of the reptile, while the neck is formed by the mouth of the canine. This type of vase was intended to pour libations during ceremony then to be placed in a sepulcher. Indeed, the vast majority of ceramics presented in museums, such as this vase, had no domestic use but rather a ritual and funeral destination.
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Website : Museum of the Americas - Auch
Pricing: Full price: € 6 / Reduced price: € 3 / Free for children under 18
Address: 9 rue Gilbert Brégail - 32000 Auch
Phone: 05 62 05 74 79
