Mexico wants this cultural touchstone returned

[Headdress, from A1]

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THE CEREMONY marks the symbolic return of deities to the universe's center.

different ways," said Miruna Achim, professor at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City. "It's a historical artifact. But it's also a symbol - a highly politicized symbol.

From its display case in the museum's "Stories from Mesoamerica" hall, the iridescent plumage shimmers like a rainbow encased in glass, a tropical interloper to these northern climes.

The museum gift shop does a brisk sale in penachothemed books, postcards, pillboxes, scarves and the like.

The penacho's formal title - "Quetzal Feather Headdress" - understates the grandeur of a one-of-akind piece with a back story stretching back more than half a millennium.

Visitors record Instagram moments in front of the almost 6-by-4-foot palette of dazzling hues - the product of hundreds of feathers from the long-tailed quetzal bird, interwoven with plumes from other species and gold ornaments. The anonymous artisans painstakingly sewed the feathers onto a net grid, stabilized with thin wooden rods.

The intricate ensemble, weighing in at less than 4 pounds, somehow survived the Spanish conquest, a perilous ocean crossing and two centuries of musty anonymity in a Tirolean castle.

The penacho, experts say, probably dates from the early 16th century, about the time when much of currentday Spain became part of the Hapsburg empire. But there is no record of who made it and, above all, how and when it ended up in Austria.

Its first recorded mention, according to an authorized history, appears in a 1596 inventory of the "Chamber of Art and Wonders" of Archduke Ferdinand at the Ambras Castle in Innsbruck. The ledger notes "a Moorish hat of long, beautiful, gleaming, shining greenish and golden feathers ... decorated with golden rosettes and discs, [and] on the forehead a solid gold beak."