JOANNE PILLSBURY: In ancient Colombia, gold was very closely associated with the sun. So, an individual who had the privilege to wear this extraordinary regalia would have been associating themselves with this generative power of the sun.

JOSÉ MARÍA YAZPIK (NARRATOR): Joanne Pillsbury, curator of Ancient American Art, Metropolitan Museum, describes how these adornments would have been worn in some of the most important ceremonies of their time.

JOANNE PILLSBURY: The central object, this sort of I-shaped object, is a pectoral. You can see two holes that would have allowed this object to be suspended by a cotton cord from the neck, and the pectoral has, as one of the primary images, this very serene face.

You’ll notice the same sort of face on the headdress frontal, the ornament at the very top of the case, and we even see it on one of the tweezer-like arm bands to the lower right. So, almost the entire body would have been covered with these gold ornaments.

JOSÉ MARÍA YAZPIK: On the pectoral, the central face is adorned with a smaller, H-shaped ornament dangling from two gold wires.

JOANNE PILLSBURY: The little nose ornament itself also bears a face. If you look closely, you can see triangular eyes and a mouth with teeth bared. So, there’s this wonderful interplay of revealing and concealing a body. These ornaments are about extending the self. They’re about radiance both in terms of the material but also in expanding the image of the wearer.

It would have been a spectacular scene to see this golden person wearing this regalia. It would have reflected the sun, being an element of the sun itself. It would have caught the light by flickering firelight even. So, it would have been an extraordinary vision to all who had the privilege to observe this.