Teotihuacan had a goddess unlike any other in Mesoamerica. Depicted with a bird headdress, fanged nose piece, and arms pouring water or seeds, Karl Taube nicknamed her "Spiderwoman" since some murals show her covered in tiny spiders. Unlike Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl, she didn't survive beyond Teotihuacan's collapse.
Teotihuacan's unique goddess appears nowhere else in Mesoamerica
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Key facts
- A female deity appears repeatedly in Teotihuacan's murals and pottery, depicted in green, red, and yellow colors
- The goddess wears a bird headdress and a nose piece with a bar and protruding fangs
- She is shown with arms outstretched, with water or seeds pouring from her hands
- Karl Taube called her the "Spiderwoman" because some murals show her covered in tiny spiders
- The goddess is unique to Teotihuacan and does not appear in any other Mesoamerican civilization's pantheon
- Unlike Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl, which also first appear at Teotihuacan but live on in central Mexican religion, this goddess did not survive beyond Teotihuacan
- Unlike aggressive Aztec female deities she has been compared to, she is depicted as a beneficent figure associated with abundance and fertility
Sources
Selected Works by Karl Andreas Taubemesoweb.com
This nose bar pendant is a primary attribute of the Teotihuacan Spider Woman, a goddess closely identified with war (Taube 1983).
Great Goddess of Teotihuacanen.wikipedia.org
In 1983, Karl Taube termed this goddess the "Teotihuacan Spider Woman". The more neutral description of this deity as the "Great Goddess" has since gained ...
Teotihuacan Spider Woman: the Great Goddess of the World Tree Mural ...thetinkuy.wordpress.com
Taube (1983) has identified Teotihuacan as the probable source of the Puebloan's mythology of Spider Woman as world creator by way of the ancient Mogollon ...
THE "GREAT GODDESS" OF TEOTIHUACAN: Fiction or Reality?jstor.org
by Z Paulinyi · 2006 · Cited by 31 — Karl Taube (1983) attempted a radical reinterpretation of the iconography of the goddess. Taube (2001: 733) maintains his thesis of the "Spider Woman" and ...
The Great Goddess of Teotihuacanhistoricalmx.org
Karl Taube, described the goddess as the “Teotihuacan Spider Woman” in 1983, due to the presence of spiders in the background of the murals which she appears.
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