Turquoise mosaic on cedar, mother-of-pearl eyes, shell teeth — believed to be part of what Moctezuma gave Cortés. Even if it started as a gift, five centuries in a foreign vitrine is a long time to be away from home.

Found in Culhuacan, Mexico City in the 19th century, this polychrome clay plaque may have once been set into the wall of an Aztec temple or shrine.  It was previously misidentified as the wind god Quetzalcoatl by the Mexican scholar Aflredo Chavero until Hermann Beyer, by comparing it with divinatory pages and festival scenes in the Codex Borbonicus, argued it showed the skin of a flayed woman representing a female deity. But who?

On this plaque, as in the sculpture of Xipe Totec impersonators, the empty eye slits and open mouth are indicative of flayed skin. It has since been published under the name of Chicomecoatl (Seven Serpent), the goddess of food, usually symbolized by maize cobs in her hands, and one of the deities represented with the skin of a sacrificed woman during the Aztec festival of Ochpaniztli.

The two main textual sources on Ochpaniztli (“Sweeping”) come from the works of the 16th century friars Diego Duran and Bernardino de Sahagun together with his Nahua informants. They tell us that Ochpaniztli was the festival of Teteoinnan/Toci--“mother of the gods.” At this time, a mature woman aged 40-45 was chosen to be worshiped as the goddess Toci and then decapitated and flayed. Her skin was worn first by one priest who assumed Toci’s identity and then another who assumed the role of her "son" Centeotl by wearing a mask of her thigh-skin for the remainder of the ceremonies. Duran adds that Ochpaniztli was celebrated in tandem with the feast of Chicomecoatl, where a young girl was killed on top of ears of corn, and her skin also worn by a priest prior to Toci’s death.

Like Chicomecoatl’s pictorial depictions, the figure on the plaque’s face is red and painted with parallel stripes on the cheeks. Although applied with chapopotli tar to resemble rubber, not much else is known about their symbolism. It has been suggested that they might have evoked milpa furrows or streaks of rain, but this guess is uncorroborated by the informants of the colonial encyclopedias. With or without Chicomecoatl these facial marking are also found among female figures in the Codices Borgia, Cospi, Borbonicus, the Aubin Tonalamati, the books of Magliabecchiano group as well as the work of friars Bernardino de Sahagun and Diego Duran. Sometimes one stripe is present on each cheek and sometimes two. In stone sculptures they are also cut into the face as slots which could have been inlayed with different materials.

On her head is the amacalli (paper house) headdress, the goddess’s typical adornment. In rituals it would have been fashioned from a sheet of fig bark framed at the top and bottom with a twisted rope and tied with a knot at the center front and back. Pleated paper rosettes, some with their original blue paint, are shown fastened to the sides and sprouting from the top of the crown. Besides fertility deities, these are also found on the array of sacrificial victims, sacrificing priests, and funerary bundles, linking them to death and mortuary rites.

Below her large earspools are tassels, painted in sets of three vertical lines, a band of five horizontal lines and fringed lines at the bottom. These are reminiscent of a tassel pattern painted near the fringe of a Xicolli vest recovered from the Templo Mayor.

The now partially destroyed object held in the figure’s mouth is believed to be a bird, and provides another important connection between this plaque and the maize deity. Several scenes through the divinatory and festival scenes of the Codex Borbonicus show figures labeled as a head priest (papa mayor) or Chicomecoatl, clad in flayed skin and carrying a bird in their mouth.

Scattered accounts from the Florentine Codex describing a similar practice allows its probable identification as a quail. At a shrine called Aticpac, a woman was offered as a sacrifice to the goddess Aticpaccalqui Cihuatl:

"and the fire priest put on her skin, and he went holding a [live] quail in his teeth; it went dangling from his mouth"

This occurred on the day Seven Serpent.

But we should keep in mind that the Aztec's great festivals--especially at the state level--were highly complex events that could be modified for particular needs and purposes, rather than static repetitions, often honoring multiple deities in different ways. Accounts of them are filtered through sources who did not always ask for or divulge more details than they deemed necessary, making it harder to put together a detailed picture of what was done to whom and when, or why.

While these accumulated traits seem to favor an identification of Chicomecoatl, other gods were still represented with the skins of slain women during Ochpaniztli. In his sprawling history Monarquía Indiana, the priest Juan de Torquemada references celebrations of Ochpaniztli in the city of Cuauhtitlan where two female slaves were beheaded and flayed, after which priests danced through the streets in the skins with quails dangling from their lips. They are recorded unnamed. On the other hand, according to a list of ritual buildings compiled by Sahagun two other women died as the goddesses Ciauteotl Atlauhco and Atlatonan and were flayed by fire priests during the same festival. In addition, numerous male captives are said to have been sacrificed on the same day as Toci and their skins worn by priests of Chicomecoatl who then showered multi-colored maize kernels on the onlookers below at the base of Great Temple.

MNA entry for the plaque: https://mna.inah.gob.mx/colecciones_detalle.php?id=2953

Sources:

•  Henry B. Nicholson and Rainer Berger, Two Aztec Wood Idols: Iconographic and Chronologic Analysis, 1968.
• Elena Mazzetto, “Quail in the Religious Life of the Ancient Nahuas,” 2023.
• Diego Durán, Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar, 1971.
• Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, 1997.
• Bernardino de Sahagún, Digital Florentine Codex, 2023.
• Catherine R. DiCesare, Sweeping the Way: Divine Transformation in the Aztec Festival of Ochpaniztli, 2009.
• Víctor Cortés Meléndez, El desollamiento humano entre los mexicas, 2020.
• Carlos Javier González González et al., Xipe Tótec y la regeneración de la vida, 2023.
• Juan de Torquemada, Monarquía indiana, 1975. Vol III, Ch. XXIII
• Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, ed. Aztecs. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2002
• Esther Pasztory, Aztec Art (1983).

A lot of people have been asking me about the Four Tezcatlipocas and why it is not an actual Aztec construct so I wrote up a blogpost about it. Check it out:

https://www.calmecacanahuac.com/blog/mexicayotl/the-four-tezcatlipocas-an-aztec-tradition-that-never-was/

Mendoza, Aubin, Telleriano, Florentine or Relacion de Michoacan

Guachichil pride :)

Have a beautiful day cousins and relatives and neighbors

This video from Bëni Xidza explores the grammatical structure of the Zapotec language, specifically focusing on the absence of articles. Here is a breakdown of the key concepts discussed:

* No Articles: Unlike Spanish, Zapotec language does not use definite articles like "el," "la," "los," or "las".

* Context as a Substitute: The speaker explains that Zapotec relies on context and specific pronouns/indicatives (such as lei or leiki) to identify objects or people. For example, instead of saying "the table," you simply say "table," and the surrounding conversation makes it clear which object is being discussed.

* Influence of Spanish: The speaker notes that the use of "one" (tu) as an indefinite article is likely a modern development resulting from contact with the Spanish language, as this feature was not part of original Zapotec grammar.

* Counting Objects: When referring to things that can be counted, numbers are used instead of articles, a practice that the speaker clarifies is distinct from the functional use of articles in languages like Spanish.

Video Overview:

This Zapotec grammar lesson explains why grammatical articles do not exist in Zapotec and how modern usage has evolved under the influence of Spanish.

Key Points:

* Absence of Articles:

* Unlike Spanish or English, Zapotec language does not have grammatical articles equivalent to el, la, los, las, or a/an.

* In standard speech, speakers directly state the noun without an accompanying article.

* Role of Pronouns and Indicators (lei / leiky):

* Words like lei serve as pronouns or context-based indicators rather than articles.

* For example, using buta lei conveys "move it" (or "move the table") when the reference is already clear within the context of the Zapotec conversation.

* Spanish Influence on Indefinite Expressions:

* Historically, Zapotec phrasing expressed actions and items directly without numbers, such as gudagu wi ("ate orange").

* Due to Spanish influence, modern speakers often insert the number "one" (tu) before a noun, such as gudagu tu wi ("ate an orange"), to mirror Spanish indefinite articles.

* Otherwise, numbers in Zapotec language are strictly intended for counting discrete items rather than serving as articles.

I’m curious because I just rewatched Apocalypto for the first time in over a decade and man, does it still slap. Great movie. But I also know that it was critiqued by historians and archaeologists for a racist, overly bloodthirsty portrayal of the Mayan peoples. Human sacrifice — the argument went — was an infrequent occurrence among the maya and it rarely provoked the level of excitement depicted on films. People took issue with both the content and the way it was portrayed.

However, I feel like I’ve read multiple papers published in the 20 years since its release showing that yes indeed human sacrifice was quite common among the Maya. Wars for both conquest, political control and sacrificial victims was a regular feature of life in the years leading up to Spanish conquest

But this is an amateur history buffs understanding from google scholar. What do you guys think?

estoy atrapada con la griega quisiera leer sobre la mexica

Four pages of Codex Mendoza place name glyphs I drew a while back.

The pages are dated using the tonalpohualli system, based on a now outdated correlation. The ehecatl day sign on page 1 is pulled from the Codex Borgia, and the cuetzpalin sign on page 3 is from another pre-Columbian codex which I cannot remember.