Feathered serpent head

This stone sculpture depicting the head of a feathered serpent may once have adorned the façade or staircase of one of the many temple platforms along Teotihuacan’s monumental Street of the Dead. Originally the stone block would have been nearly three times as long. When set into the rubble core of the structure, the uncarved portion, now broken off at the back of the head, would have acted as a counterweight, securing the visible portion securely in place (Sarro 1991, fig. 1). The creature’s head is carved in a way that maintains the stone’s block-like shape, with horizontal and vertical cuts forming the facial contours. The feathers on the snout and eyes that transform the earthly serpent into a mythical beast are rendered in low relief. Gazing straight ahead, with its mouth open and teeth bared, it commands the space before it.

Recent examination by the museum’s conservation department has revealed traces of pigment that suggest that the whole was once painted. The creature would have appeared more lifelike, and fearsome, as it once appeared, with yellow and orange feathers, and its lips, gums, and tongue in shades of red.

Feathered serpents are among the most common of Teotihuacan’s zoomorphic images, carved in stone and painted on walls and ceramic vessels. They embody the powers of both the earth and sky, and are associated with cosmological narratives, rulership, and military might. Rulers and priests ascending or descending the stairs flanked by feathered serpent heads such as this one would have centered themselves in this otherworldly landscape during ritual performances, claiming its power for themselves.　

The use of stone sculpture as architectural ornamentation at Teotihuacan was far more limited and selective than that of mural painting which could be found in a variety of locales throughout the city, from the interior walls of apartment compounds far from the city’s center to the surfaces of pyramid platforms lining the Street of the Dead. In contrast, stone sculpture has been found almost exclusively in public spaces in the heart of the city. The most elaborate of these is the composition incorporating feathered serpent imagery that once covered all levels and sides of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid’s stepped platform. There, these beings are depicted undulating among the shells of sea creatures from distant oceans, thus embodying the powers of earth, sea, and sky while suggesting Teotihuacan’s vast range of influence. Centuries later, Mexica architects recreated this Mesoamerican sacred landscape when they constructed the Templo Mayor in their capital city of Tenochtitlan as a primordial mountain with feathered serpents emerging from its rocky façade.

Patricia J. Sarro, 2025


Further Reading

Berrin, Kathleen, editor. Feathered Serpents and Flowering Trees. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1988.


Carballo, David M., Kenneth G. Hirth, and Barbara Arroyo. Teotihuacan: The World Beyond the City. Dumbarton Oaks, 2020.


Cabrera Castro, Rubén, Saburo Sugiyama, and George L. Cowgill. The Templo de Quetzalcoatl Project at Teotihuacan: A Preliminary Report. Ancient Mesoamerica, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 77-92, 1991.

Headrick, Annabeth. The Teotihuacan Trinity: The Sociopolitical Structure of an Ancient Mesoamerican City. University of Texas Press, 2007.

López Luján, Leonardo, Laura Filloy Nadal, Barbara W. Fash, William L. Fash, and Pilar Hernández. The Destruction of Images in Teotihuacan: Anthropomorphic Sculpture, Elite Cults, and the End of a Civilization. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 49/50, pp. 12-39, Spring-Autumn, 2006.

Nicholson, H.B., The Iconography of the Feathered Serpent in Late Postclassic Central Mexico. In Davíd Carrasco, Lindsay Jones, and Scott Sessions, eds., Mesoamerica’s Classic Heritage, pp. 145-164. University Press of Colorado, 2000.


Robb, Matthew, editor. Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017.


Ruiz Gallut, María Elena, and Jesús Torres Peralta, eds. Arquitectura y urbanismo: pasado y presente de los espacios en Teotihuacan: Memoria de la Tercera Mesa Redonda de Teotihuacan. Mexico City, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2005.


Sarro, Patricia Joan. The Role of Architectural Sculpture in Ritual Space at Teotihuacan, Mexico. Ancient Mesoamerica 2, no. 2 (1991): 249–62. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26307158.

Sarro, Patricia J., and Matthew H. Robb. Passing through the Center: The Architectural and Social Contexts of Teotihuacan Painting. In Cynthia Kristan-Graham and Laura M. Amrhein, eds., Memory Traces: Analyzing Sacred Space at Five Mesoamerican Sites, pp. 21-43. University Press of Colorado, 2015.

Sugiyama, Saburo. Human Sacrifice, Militarism, and Rulership: Materialization of State Ideology at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, Teotihuacan. Cambridge University Press, 2005.


Taube, Karl A. The Temple of Quetzalcoatl and the Cult of Sacred War at Teotihuacan. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 21, pp. 53-87, Spring, 1992.