Aztec Death Whistle
The Aztec death whistle, sometimes called ehecachichtli or skull whistle, is a small clay whistle about three to five centimetres long, modelled as a human skull, whose internal chambers produce a shrill, wind-like and unsettling tone. The most famous examples were excavated in the late 1990s at Tlatelolco, clasped in the hands of a sacrificed man buried before a temple of the wind god Ehecatl, and they have been linked to both Ehecatl and the death god Mictlantecuhtli. Scholars such as Arnd Adje Both argue the original instruments mimicked the howling winds that Aztec souls met in the underwo