Scholar Mary Miller, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History of Art at Yale

NARRATOR: The figure on the front of this Aztec incense burner is wonderfully complex and lively. His crenulated headdress, the large paper ear flares, and the goggle over one eye all symbolize the great Aztec rain god Tláloc . But as Yale Sterling Professor Emeritus of the History of Art Mary Miller explains, the figure is combined with another god as well.

MARY MILLER: Look across the rest of the body. As we look down across his chest, we see this wonderful, great necklace that is made of maize cobs. What we may be seeing then is the layering of the rain god, on one side, overlapping the maize god. These are the things that you would need in order to bring fertility and bounty.

NARRATOR: The Aztec dominated the Valley of Mexico some four hundred years ago, throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Their capital was at Tenochtitlan, present-day Mexico City. But this object was probably made in a small provincial town.

MARY MILLER: One can see how, for example, this great loincloth that he's wearing has been rolled out like a sheet of gingerbread and how there are parts of this that have been made through really a kind of cookie-cutter technique. Other parts, for example, those strips of clay that run along the bottom of the brazier, have been rolled out like snakes of Play-Doh. So you have the sense here of a kind of cottage industry.

NARRATOR: A priest would've carried the incense burner in seasonal rituals related to planting and harvesting.