Aztec Art II - The Great Temple

Tlatelolco was not part of the Great Temple, but as a neighbor site it should be included on this page. Tlatelolco was formerly a city north of Tenochtitlan with an enormous marketplace. From one of the tallest buildings above the market, a trio of judges would declare buying and selling rates for goods every morning. Fruits, livestock, slaves, jewelry, clothing, and pottery were among the many items sold across this mercantile district.

Tlatelolco

This small, round temple had originally belonged to the central plaza of Tenochtitlan, where it housed the altar for the Wind God Ehecatl. Much of this temple was actually excavated during construction of a subway tunnel, and it is still the central feature of the Pino Suarez subway station. Its circular peak is a typical feature of the Wind Temples. At its base are year-glyphs that likely designate the time of its commission.

Pino Suarez Metro Station

These bearers were discovered along a stairway of the Great Temple's Phase III construction. This dates them to the year 1431, when Itzcoatl was emperor. Hewn from single slabs of igneous stone, they would have stood to hold tall flags in their grasping hands during ceremonies.

Aztec Great Temple Museum

A masterpiece of Aztec stonework. Almost three feet long, this monolithic work shows an elegant lining to its shell. The conch was a symbol of life; according to one myth, human life was conceived by Quetzalcoatl's divine act of boring into a conch. This is one of the reasons Quetzalcoatl/Ehecatl often wears a conch segment as his pectoral. As both a life symbol and an aquatic creature this was fittingly placed in Tlaloc's half of the Great Temple. The chief rain spirit Tlaloc promised water and life, while the war god Huitzilopochtli promoted victory and death. These two gods together embodied the fundamental qualities of the Aztec's life in his empire.

Aztec Great Temple Museum

Just as the military élite were divided into the Eagle Warriors of the day and the Jaguar Warriors of the night, this eagle bowl is the companion to the jaguar bowl at the National Museum of Anthropology. Each bowl has a shallow receptacle on its back for receiving sacrificial hearts. When human sacrifice was recognized as a valuable way to show political might, its use was enhanced. On one recorded day, around eight hundred people, mostly prisoners of battle, were sacrificed at the capital Tenochtitlan.

Aztec Great Temple Museum

The eagles were the birds that carried the sun, the source of all sustenance, from the underworld into the morning sky. For that respect, the eagle represented the power of day, so it became the garb for the most prestigious warriors who fought by day. The terracotta eagle-warrior sculpture is nearly life-size, and not surprisingly it was unearthed from the War God Huitzilopochtli's half of the Great Temple.

Aztec Great Temple Museum

As the Mexica Aztec rulers were flaunting their power, the remnants of the sacrifice were just as important as the rite itself. At the ceremonial center of Tenochtitlan, the sacrifices' skulls were posted along long series of racks called tzompantli. More durable altars were carved from monolithic stone, some to the size of walls. This is a section from one of those stone walls.

Aztec Great Temple Museum

Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror was the opponent to Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent. What the Feathered Serpent stood for in life, in love, and in luminosity, the Smoking Mirror reversed as the god of night, of darkness, and of deception. This was Yaotl - the Enemy, the one who obscured a man's reflections if he were to gaze into the smoking mirror of obsidian. Paradoxically, however, Tezcatlipoca was also known for his ability to guide rulers by the light of his torch, and he was profoundly associated with legitimate reign. This clay urn shows Tezcatlipoca holding a pair of darts in one hand and an atlatl spear-thrower in his other. Two distinctions identify this god: the bands streaked across his face and the exposed bone where his foot should be. That is all that remains after the great earth beast Cipactli bit his foot off, and thereafter it became a mirror. Inside this container, a small necklace of obsidian duck heads and cremated bones have been discovered. The bones likely belonged to the emperor Tizoc, now returned to the temple of Huitzilopochtli.

Aztec Great Temple Museum

Since the time of the Toltec, the Chac-Mool served as a vessel from man to the gods. It was believed to deliver the sacrificial heart to the gods. While the Aztecs used monumental vessels such as the mentioned eagle and jaguar bowls, they also employed the more traditional Chac-Mool for the same purpose.

Aztec Great Temple Museum

Since almost the very inception of the Aztecs' central temple at Tenochtitlan, there has been a Chac-Mool to receive their offerings. This wonderfully preserved Chac-Mool retains much of its original color. It has been dated to either 1350 or to Phase II of the Teocalli's construction, between 1375 and 1427. It is one of the oldest Mexica artifacts at the Teocalli.

Aztec Great Temple Museum

The instruments of sacrifice. This is clear by the bits of shell and stone embedded along the sides of the knife, to represent the faces of the gods to whom the sacrificial hearts were offered. The knife, better known as a tecpatl, is sharpened from a single piece of stone, usually flint or silex, and set in a base of copal incense. These were the deadliest works of art in Mesoamerica.

Aztec Great Temple Museum

Over 200 separate pieces of carved mother-of-pearl, golden beads, and greenstone beads were put into this extraordinarily elaborate necklace. Given the sacredness of shells described above, this necklace had both aesthetic and symbolic value.

Aztec Great Temple Museum

Yes, this was made from a human skull. The shell and pyrite insets into the sockets must bring some life back into this skull, but the tecpatl blade pushed into the nasal cavity has been suggested to cut off the human's vital breath. Several holes were perforated into the upper rim, either to hold small items like feathers or to run the string which would have enabled a priest to wear this as a mask.

Aztec Great Temple Museum