Word: obsidian
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...curse bequeathed to Mexico City by the Aztecs was the curse of human sacrifice. That ritual, in which a priest bent over the recumbent victim and cut out his throbbing heart with an obsidian knife, was central to the Aztecs' religion. The war god Huitzilopochtli required blood as the price of Aztec victory and the rain god Tlaloc required it as the price of the harvest; if these gods remained unpropitiated, the world would end. Exactly how many victims were thus sacrificed (and later eaten) remains uncertain, but it is believed that 20,000 prisoners were offered...
...take it with him. All of it. When the tomb was unsealed in 1922 after about 3,000 years, it disgorged a funerary trove unrivaled in history or the imagination: golden chairs and chests, pearly alabaster statuary and polychromatic bursts of gold, lapis lazuli, carnelian, jasper and obsidian jewelry: some of the most beautiful body ornaments ever designed. And, of course, there was also the famous quartzite sarcophagus with its nesting of golden inner coffins that protected the mummified remains of the frail king who died about 1325 B.C., before his 20th birthday...
Indeed, Tutankhamun lived during a blaze of pharaonic wealth and power. Besides their use of gold, his artists worked in silver, alabaster, obsidian, lapis lazuli, wood, glass and gems, handling each material as masterfully as if it were clay. They had turned from much of the rigid formality that marks artworks of earlier periods to more natural poses and more intimate scenes...
...soft chrysalis spit a lovely golden slit, her slimy infant shape weak at first clung to her husk, slowly an iris her wet obsidian-tipped wings unfolded turquoise & gold, scarlet & deep green, wavered then taking off a ripple running thru the whole of creation lifting into the glowing azure sky over the intense Okumura Garden where I stood amazed watching my image separate from...
...precise outline drawing and responded to absolute clarity of form. Hence it was ideal for a precisionist like Mantegna, whose few engravings are almost mineral in their sharpness. Not even the drapery on his figures was soft; with deep cuts and cracking angles, it might have been carved from obsidian...