THE JADE OF THE TUXTLA STATUETTE. 



By Henry S. Washington, 



0/ the Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington. 



Introduction. — One of the most interesting of the small objects that 

 have come down to us from the ancient Maya civilization is the so- 

 called Tuxtla ^ statuette, which has been described by W. H. Holmes.^ 

 This object was ploughed up in 1902 " in the district of San Andres 

 de Tuxtla on the Gulf coast of Mexico, about 100 miles southwest of 

 Vera Cruz," and was later acquired by the United States National 

 Museum (No. 222,579). 



The statuette is of special importance because, according to 

 Morley,^ it is the oldest known dated object in American art. The 

 date assigned by Morley to the statuette, from study of the central 

 front row of glyphs, and assuming the contemporaneity of the in- 

 scription and the statuette, is 8. 6. 2. 17. 8 Caban Kankin, in 

 Mayan chronology, which corresponds to 96 B. C, according to 

 Morley's recently published correlation of the Mayan and Christian 

 chronologies.* It thus antedates the coming of Columbus by about 

 sixteen hundred years. 



The material of which the statuette is composed is obviously a 

 "jade." It was examined years ago by Wirt Tassin, then an assist- 

 ant curator in the United States National Museum, who reported it 

 as nephrite, by which name both Holmes and Morley speak of the 

 material. There appears to be no report extant of the results of 

 Tassin's examination, nor record of any analysis by him. The pres- 

 ent study, by optical and chemical methods, shows that the material 

 is not nephrite but a variety of jadeite.^ 



> Pronounced TushUa. In Maya x represents sh. 



> \V. H. Holmes, Araer. Anthr., vol. 9, p. 691, 1907, See S. G. Morley, Carnegie Publication No. 219i 

 p. 402, 1920. 



« S. G. Morloy, Bur. Amer. Ethnol., Bull. 57, p. 196, 1915. 



< S. G. Morley, The Inscriptions at Copan, Carnegie Publication No. 219, pp. 4G.3-555, 1920. 



» As is well known, the tenn "jade " is used for two dififerent minerals, both of which have much the 

 same properties so far as their employment in glyptic art is concerned ; namely, nephrite, a lime-magnesia 

 amphibole, and ;a(2ei7«, a soda-alumina pyroxine, both silicates. Typical jadeite is purely sodic, but it 

 often contains other isomorphous constituents giving rise to varieties. We shall di?tinguish here betwee 

 ioda jadeite and the mixture diopside jadeite, the latter containing lime and magnesia in addition to soda. 



No. 2409.— Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 60, Art. 14. 



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