In 1520, the German artist Albrecht Dürer witnessed a hoard of all kinds of wondrous objects, "a sun of gold... and a moon of silver... ingenious marvels of men in foreign lands".
He was extolling the precious loot sent back to Europe by Hernan Cortés from the imperial Aztec court of Moctezuma in what is now known as Mexico.
Nearly 500 years later and we are still searching for a true appreciation of that art and those historic times. How did a vast, complex and culturally sophisticated nation fall to few conquistadors led by a near-bandit?
The latest exhibition at the British Museum devoted to the legacies of world leaders follows those of the First Emperor of China, the Roman Emperor Hadrian and the Persian leader Shah 'Abbas.
In each of these, a narrative golden thread led us through the exhibits to an appreciation of their subjects.
Blood and guts
The task for any delineator of Moctezuma is more difficult. Whose history is before us? Who are the tellers and who are the audience?
In contemporary Mexico, Moctezuma is an ambivalent figure. As one modern historian has noted, he's the man who lost against the Spanish - and no culture likes a loser.
Yet, of all the rulers of the Mexica world, his is the only name which is universally recognised. How can we make a judgement?
The Spaniards destroyed the records of the empire they crushed; a hellish state, they insisted, of bloodthirsty pagans saved by the mercy of Christian redeemers.
The curator of the Moctezuma exhibition, Colin McEwan, has faced a near-impossible challenge. There are no contemporary portraits; the Mexica did not make personalised images.
So at the very start of the show we are confronted with an idealised romantic portrait, painted for Cosimo de' Medici in the late-17th century. Bronzed and feathered, Moctezuma looks more like an exotic dancer in a tourist resort than a living being.
Taken from artistic fantasy into the real world of artefacts, our eyes and minds are soon engaged. We learn that Moctezuma was both supreme ruler in all political, military, administrative and judicial matters as well as being the personification and expiator of the gods.
Daily rituals secured the circle of the seasons, the fertility of the soil, flora and fauna and the prosperity of his people. Repeated human sacrifice was the sure way of preventing chaos. Without blood, the gods would die of thirst and the universe wither.
The ritual focus was a massive pyramid in the centre of the lake city of Tenochtitlan, the Templo Mayor. Dried blood and body parts caked the stairways; racks of human skulls were witnesses of these gruesome attempts to avert climate change.
Clearly Moctezuma was not presiding over a benign pre-Hispanic paradise. A magnificent giant stone eagle has a basin in its back to collect human sacrifices, a greenstone heart, shows not only veins and arteries, but bears a grotesque fanged face.
Serpents and rattlesnakes, eagles and jaguars abound in carved stone and exquisitely made masks of turquoise and mother-of-pearl.
Downfall
In the very centre of the exhibition stands an extraordinary votive monument - the Teocalli of Sacred Warfare. Carved from volcanic rock, it forms a pyramid with steps leading to a temple. Every facet is carved with fierce deities.
The piece celebrates the New Fire ceremony of 1507, the most important ritual of Moctezuma's reign, when after a period of 52 years the two calendars of Mexica met and the sun had to be rekindled by the active intervention of the ruler.
What to us seems savagery occurred in an empire of expanding trade. Tenochtitlan was a wondrous place set in a large lake with palaces, temples, flower-lined canals and artificial islands.
Art, poetry and universal education flourished. The city was home to perhaps a quarter of a million people, five times larger than Tudor London.
In 1519, two civilisations collided. Eleven Spanish ships, looking like towers or small mountains, were sighted off the Veracruz coast. Some 450 soldiers equipped with firearms, horses and armour came ashore.
For all their sophistication, the Mexica were militarily still in the Stone Age. Their daggers had blades of knapped flint; their swords were of wood with slivers of obsidian.
The Mexica had numbers, but little technology. They had never before seen horses; they thought they were devils.
The exhibition cleverly highlights this clash. Visitors turn a corner from the world of Moctezuma to be confronted by the standard of Cortés with an iron breastplate and the body armour of a cavalry horse.
The effect is almost operatic in its intensity. You begin to understand how a vigorous and sophisticated society imploded when its leader was removed.
Looking for lost history
Seven large oil paintings on wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, created in late 17th-century Mexico, narrate, from a conqueror's perspective, the downfall of Moctezuma and the triumph of Cortés.
So too does a massive baroque screen that chronologically relates the invasion. With his palace in flames behind him, Moctezuma is struck down and killed by slingshots from disaffected followers.
Two tiny images from indigenous sources suggest a different scenario. They show a chained or bound emperor on a balcony adjacent to a corpse impaled by a Spanish sword.
A final painting from Madrid poses the quandary. Moctezuma, on bended knee before an enthroned Cortés, offers tributes and allegiance while acknowledging the King of Spain as his lawful successor.
Is it not more likely, as this exhibition suggests, that Moctezuma and his court were murdered when they were of no further political value?
Spaniards subsequently destroyed the indigenous culture. The sons of Moctezuma were eradicated, his daughters used as mistresses or passed on as wives to the Spanish nobility.
The final and most lethal weapon was disease. By 1600 the population had fallen from 10 million to 1 million, victims of European-borne smallpox and typhus.
The temples of Tenochtitlan lie under the sprawling streets of Mexico City. Modern excavations will bring new evidence to ponder.
The exhibition is sumptuous, but intellectually hard work. It was noticeable that visitors moved more slowly and intently than in previous exhibitions in the series. It pays to purchase the excellent catalogue, which combines high scholarship with a clearly understandable text.
No one who loves museums should miss this show.
Peter Lewis is a writer and a past director of Beamish
Cost £1m
Main supporters ArcelorMittal, Mexicana
Curator Colin McEwan
Exhibition design Studio A
Graphic production BAF Graphics/ Halcyon Advertising & Design
Lighting Lightwaves
AV content Elbow Productions
Showcases Glasbau Hahn
Exhibition ends 24 January 2010
