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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

A ‘spirit mirror’ used in Elizabeth I’s court had Aztec roots

Geochemical analysis suggests that an obsidian mirror owned by a confidant of the English Tudor queen was made in Mexico.
Elizabeth Healey studying the John Dee Obsidian mirror

The mirror owned by astrologer John Dee is made of stone traced to a source near Pachuca, Mexico. The Aztecs created objects of the same stone. Credit: Stuart Campbell

To summon spirits, sixteenth-century English astrologer John Dee, a confidant of Queen Elizabeth I, gazed into a mirror made of polished stone. Now, researchers have confirmed that Dee’s mirror has Aztec origins1.

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Nature 598, 239 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02701-5

References

  1. Campbell, S., Healey, E., Kuzmin, Y. & Glascock, M. D. Antiquity https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2021.132 (2021).

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