Colima Sculpture of a Man with an Erect Phallus - PF.2874, Origin: Western Mexico, Circa: 300 BC to 300 AD, Dimensions: 12.25" (31.1cm) high x 8.5" (21.6cm) wide, Collection: Pre-Columbian, Style: Colima, Medium: Terracotta. This richly burnished hollow clay male figure sits with an exaggerated phallus. He wears a large headdress that hangs down on both sides of his well-formed face. His back and chest are enhanced with unusually shaped scarification marks, each round mark slit in the middle with incision although the figure's overt sexual quality may seem exhibitionistic in our culture, it possessed entirely different significance in Ancient Meso-America. Considering the Meso- American religious context, which indicates that life, emerges from death, the figure with exaggerated phallus symbolizes the regeneration of life after death. Used as a ritualistic offering, the figure's sexual characteristic served as a sign of fertility and life. Considering such connotation of fertility, the designed, scarification-like marks could also represent female genitalia, as seen on other Colima figures with sexual attributes. The obsessive quality of the repeated design all over the figure's back and chest seems to strongly reinforce the concept of life and birth. To people in late pre- classic Colima, such artistic expression was neither pornographic nor tabooed. This seated male figure, thus, undoubtedly expresses the importance of regeneration.

Antiquities
Ancient Central America & Mexico