46 
stone, or porphyry with basis of greenstone, 
which antiquaries commonly call Egyptian ba- 
salt. The folds of the headdress, and especially 
the pearls, are highly finished ; though the 
artist, destitute of a steel chisel, and with no 
tools perhaps but those of copper mixed with 
; tin, such as I have brought from Peru, must 
have encountered great difficulties in the exe- 
cution. 
This statue has been very accurately drawn, 
under the inspection of M. Dupe, by a student 
of the Academy of Painting at Mexico. It is 
0*38 of a metre in height, and 0*19 in breadth. 
I have adopted the denomination of the statue 
of a priestess, the title which it bears in the 
country. It may nevertheless represent some 
Mexican divinity, and have been originally 
classed among the household gods. The head- 
dress and pearls found on an idol discovered in 
the ruins of Tezcuco, and which I deposited in 
.the cabinet of the King of Prussia, at Berlin, 
give authority to this conjecture. The orna- 
ment of the^ neck, and the natural form of the 
head, render it more probable, that the statue 
represents simply an Aztech woman. On this 
last supposition, the fluted pads, which extend 
toward the breast, cannot be tresses ; since the 
virgins, who devoted themselves to the service of 
the temple, were shorn by the high priest, or 
tepanteohuatzin. 
i 
