Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of cases
- Acknowledgments
- A Word about Terminologies
- Nahuatl Pronunciation Guide
- Part 1 Setting the Stage
- Chapter 1 Discovering, Uncovering, and Interpreting the Aztec World
- Chapter 2 The Aztecs as Mesoamericans
- Part 2 Aztec Society and Culture
- Glossary
- Notes
- References
- Index
Chapter 1 - Discovering, Uncovering, and Interpreting the Aztec World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of cases
- Acknowledgments
- A Word about Terminologies
- Nahuatl Pronunciation Guide
- Part 1 Setting the Stage
- Chapter 1 Discovering, Uncovering, and Interpreting the Aztec World
- Chapter 2 The Aztecs as Mesoamericans
- Part 2 Aztec Society and Culture
- Glossary
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Then he [King Ahuitzotl] called the stoneworkers and ordered them to finish the temple of their god as quickly as possible. Without delay they began to work on the stones that were lacking and carve the figures I saw in a painted manuscript, which were, in this manuscript, a sharp sacrificial stone and next to it an image of the goddess called Coyolxauh; and on the corners of the temple two statues with cruciform mantles, these made of rich feathers.
Diego Durán 1994: 328; originally written 1581This temple sat at the very heart of the Aztecs’ empire, the axis mundi of their known world (Figures 1.1 and 1.2). Soon to be dedicated, in the year AD 1487, this version of the Huey Teocalli, or Great Temple, was the fifth full expansion of a humble construction erected in AD 1325. That first modest temple, built of reeds, wood, and mud, was the effort of a small, bedraggled, and unwelcome group of Mexica who had recently arrived in the Basin of Mexico in search of a new homeland and, in their eyes, their destiny.
The temple would experience one more expansion, in 1502. This was the temple seen and climbed by the Spaniard Hernán Cortés in his epic visit to the Mexica capital city of Tenochtitlan in November 1519 (Figure 1.3). Less than two years later, in August 1521, the great city fell to the Spanish conquerors, to be recast as Mexico City in the Spanish Empire’s colonial jurisdiction of New Spain.
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- Aztec Archaeology and Ethnohistory , pp. 3 - 30Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014