The Aztecs

by Michael E Smith

  Everyone, from the lowest commoner to the highest priests and king, was involved in some aspect of the Toxcatl ceremonies. Although the Toxcatl ceremony was “one of the most ostentatious and imposing known to the Indians,”25 similar sets of rituals involving all ranks of society took place in each of the 18 months.

  The New Fire ceremony and the End of the World

  The New Fire ceremony, also known as the “binding of the years,” was carried out upon the completion of each 52-year calendar cycle. The myth of the five suns predicted the destruction of the world by earthquakes at the end of a calendar cycle, but it was not known which cycle would be the last one. Preparation for the possible end of the world began with major housecleaning: all household idols, cooking implements, clothing, and mats were discarded, and houses and yards were carefully swept and cleaned (figure 10.12A). During the last five unlucky days of the last year of the cycle, fires were extinguished, and the people climbed up on their roofs to await the fate of the world.

  Figure 10.12 Ritual dump from the New Fire ceremony. (A) Breaking and discarding household possessions (Sahagún 1950–1982:bk.7:fig.19). (B) Ritual dump of household possessions excavated at Cuexcomate (drawing by Michael E. Smith)

  After dark on the final day of the calendar cycle, priests climbed the mountain Citlaltepec near Tenochtitlan to observe the heavens. Today Citlaltepec is called Cerro de la Estrella; both names mean “Star Mountain.” The Pleiades constellation was the augury of the sunrise of the new cycle. The priest-astronomers anxiously followed this cluster of stars as it rose in the sky. If the constellation crossed the zenith as it normally does, they knew that the sun would rise again and the world would be spared for at least another 52 years. One hurdle remained, however. A new fire had to be kindled there on the mountaintop by a fire drill placed on the chest of a sacrificial victim: “all were frightened and filled with dread . . . it was claimed that if fire could not be drawn, then [the sun] would be destroyed forever; all would be ended; there would evermore be night.”26

  Once a flame was lit, the victim was sacrificed and his heart thrown into the fire. The fire was carried to a temple in Tenochtitlan, where it was used to light many carefully made torches. Warriors, messengers, and other swift runners took up the torches to carry the flame to all parts of the empire. Eventually, everyone's hearth was relit from the new fire. People everywhere rejoiced at the start of a new 52-year cycle, and they obtained new household goods to begin again. I suspect that the New Fire ritual was particularly appreciated by potters, obsidian knappers, mat makers, idol makers, and other artisans, although Sahagún and the other sources are silent on this issue.

  We excavated two ritual dumps at Cuexcomate that contained the remains of household goods, most likely broken and discarded in a New Fire ceremony.27 Unlike usual domestic refuse, which was spread around people's back yards and built up over a period of time, the materials in the ritual dumps were placed into shallow pits in residential courtyards and covered with a layer of rocks (figure 10.12B). We know that these deposits were not simple trash pits because many pottery vessels could be pieced back together, indicating that they were deliberately broken at the pit. Vessels from ordinary trash deposits at this site could almost never be reassembled because the pieces were so widely scattered. These ritual dumps, and others at sites in the Valley of Mexico, support Sahagún's descriptions of such practices and confirm that celebrations like the New Fire Ceremony took place in rural areas far from Tenochtitlan.

  The Ballgame

  The Aztec ballgame tlachtli was a public ceremony with ancient roots that combined ritual, sport, and entertainment.28 The ballgame was played with a hard rubber ball on a large I-shaped court (figures 10.13, 10.14). Carved stone rings were mounted vertically in the center of the walls, often at the top of a sloping ramp. Players could only hit the ball with hips or knees, and wore protective suits of deerskin. If a player hit the ball through a ring, his team won the game. Goals were rare occurrences, however, and most games were probably won and lost on points gained for various maneuvers and skills. Sometimes the game was played between teams of players; at other times, individuals faced off against each other (figure 10.13).

  Figure 10.13 An Aztec ballcourt with a game in progress (modified after Codex Magliabechiano 1983:f.80r; drawing by Ellen Cesarski)

  Figure 10.14 Aztec ballcourt at Coatetelco (photograph by Michael E. Smith)

  The ballgame was a sacred event charged with religious meaning. The ball was viewed as the sun that passed through the dark underworld (represented by the court) each night. The ballgame was a holy battle between the sun and the moon, between the sun and the planet Venus, or between the gods of youth and those of old age. The ballgame also had sacrificial connotations, and the ball was likened to a severed human head. In the ballcourt in figure 10.13, death is indicated by four human skulls and three death-heads, symbols of the god Mictlantecuhtli. Priests used the ballgame as a form of divination to predict the future and to help guide the actions of kings. A game would be commissioned and a possible future course of events assigned to each team. The results of the game were seen as an omen of the future.

  The ballgame was significant not only as a religious event but also as one of the few organized athletic events in Aztec culture. The teams of neighboring cities played each other. Nobles both played the game and attended as spectators, gambling feathers and jade on the outcome. Some nobles could afford to gamble large sums at the ballcourt, but poorer nobles or commoners could find themselves in trouble. Of these latter individuals, Friar Durán said with scorn:

  These wretches played [the ballgame] for stakes of little value or worth, and since the pauper loses quickly what he has, they were forced to gamble their homes, their fields, their corn granaries, their maguey plants. They sold their children in order to bet and even staked themselves and became slaves.29

  Private Rituals

  Domestic Ritual

  Not all ritual was carried out in public ceremonies. Every Aztec home was also a setting for worship, much of which paralleled the actions that took place in temples and processions. Friar Durán described this domestic worship:

  All this food and drink was offered up in the temples, and each person offered the same in his domestic shrine . . . People made little hills of amaranth dough within their homes [and placed them] in shrines or special niches where the idols were kept, just as today they keep the (Christian) images.30

  Most domestic rituals were carried out by women, who used sweeping and petitions to the gods to keep the spiritual world of the home and family in balance. Excavations of Aztec houses have turned up considerable evidence for domestic rituals that are barely suggested in the ethnohistoric sources.31 Although no shrines like those mentioned by Durán have been found, domestic trash deposits do contain abundant, broken ritual objects, the most common of which are clay figurines (figure 10.15). Some figurines represent deities, but most depict people (women more commonly than men), animals, and other natural objects. When archaeologists find figurines, the heads are rarely connected to bodies, which suggests that they may have been broken deliberately before they were discarded. Figurines were most likely used in curing and other domestic rituals by women of the family or by other women, who, as professional curers or midwives, came into the home.

  Figure 10.15 Ceramic figurines used in domestic rituals at Yautepec (photograph by Michael E. Smith)

  Remains of long-handled frying-pan incense burners or censers of the sort used by priests (figure 10.1) are also common in Aztec domestic trash deposits. Ethnohistoric sources described several occasions on which priests purified houses with the censers, but the large numbers of fragments of such vessels suggest that the commoners also must have used them in their homes to burn incense. These domestic incense burners were identical to those found at temples. Excavated deposits from temples, however, have several times as many of these artifacts as the average house. Other domestic rituals included rites associated with chi
ldbirth, weddings, and burial after death.

  Magic, Astrology and Divination

  The Aztecs practiced a variety of forms of magic and divination.32 Most of these acts were performed by specialists of several types, including fortune-tellers, physicians, and magicians. These specialists included both men and women. The names of the different types of fortune-telling gives an idea of the nature of these practices: “Casting kernels of maize,” “Tying of knots,” “Looking into the water.” The first type was probably the most prevalent, and indeed this kind of divination is still practiced today by some Mesoamerican native peoples. The best description is by the friar Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, who traveled through rural Nahuatl-speaking areas of Guerrero and Morelos in the early 1600s stamping out idolatry. He found a flourishing culture of rural fortune-tellers and physicians (he called them “sorcerers”) who were practicing their craft invoking the ancient Aztec gods in Nahuatl. As part of Ruiz de Alarcón's efforts to put an end to these pagan practices, he recorded the chants and actions of the rituals. Here is an example:

  The sorcery with the maize . . . they pretend it to be a general remedy for stolen things; for absent persons; for illnesses and their cause, and for their cures . . . After arranging the kernels on the cloth, he [the sorcerer] begins his charm with those remaining in his hand, shaking them, tossing them in the air, and returning often to pick them up. Then he begins the following invocation: “Please bring yourself forth,/Precious prince 7 Serpent./Please come forth,/Those of the Five Signs,/Those of one courtyard./. . . /I shall see/In my book,/In my mirror,/What is causing trouble/For the unfortunate person,/The child of the gods.33

  In this spell, recorded in Nahuatl, “Precious prince 7 Serpent” refers to the maize kernels that will answer the question, and “Those of the Five Signs, Those of one courtyard” refers to the sorcerer's fingers.

  Another form of magic and divination was based on the 260-day ritual calendar, the tonalpohualli. This calendar, described in more detail in the next chapter, was used to predict the fate of individuals (based upon their birth date), and to determine days to hold important events, both ritual and practical. Individual days were considered to be either lucky, unlucky, or neutral, as were particular groups of 5 and 13 days. Days and groups of days were ruled by particular deities; figure 1.7, for example, shows a group of 13 days (a trecena) over which Quetzalcoatl presided. Much of this system resembles modern astrology.

  Important ceremonies were tied to specific days in the 260-day calendar, and people arranged their affairs around the lucky and unlucky associations of particular days. For example the pochteca merchants made sure that the day they set out on a long journey was a lucky day. Much of the complex, esoteric meaning of this calendar and its symbolism have been lost, and the content of the ritual books based upon it, such as the Codex Borgia (figures 1.7, 11.1), are only partially understood today. Near the start of the Codex Borgia, for example, is a table that links groups of five days to specific symbols (figure 10.16). Some of these appear to be good omens (e.g., birth from a shell) but the majority (capture in war, strangling, plagues, and the like) are negative. Others (e.g., the owl) remain inscrutable to us today.

  Figure 10.16 Portion of an astrological table showing predictions for specific days of the 260-day ritual calendar (modified after Seler 1963)

  The Christian friars, who worked hard to convert indigenous peoples following the Spanish Conquest, were favorably impressed with the religiosity and devotion of the Nahua people, even though they objected to much of the content of native religion. Religious worship was well integrated into daily life at all levels of society. Beyond myths and rituals, religion was the context for the development of many of the intellectual and aesthetic accomplishments of the Aztecs, to which we now turn.

  Chapter 11

  Science, Writing, and Calendars

  The philosophers and wise men had charge of recording all the sciences of which they had knowledge and of which they had achieved understanding, and of teaching from memory all the songs that preserved their sciences and histories.

  Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Obras históricas

  The scientific and intellectual achievements of the Aztec peoples were considerable. I have already touched upon many of these in the preceding chapters, for science and the arts were inextricably bound up with other aspects of Aztec culture. The Aztecs, like most ancient peoples, did not have a term for “science,” yet they were keen observers of the world and achieved a high level of knowledge and accomplishments in science and technology. Many scientific ideas were applied toward practical ends in areas such as agriculture, architecture, craft production, and medicine. Others were applied toward religion and ritual, as in the cases of astronomy and calendrics. We begin with Aztec writing, a fundamental component of intellectual, practical, and religious life.

  Writing

  Paper

  The Aztecs wrote on many media – stone sculptures, ceramic vessels, and other objects – but the most common medium was painted manuscripts. Most manuscripts consisted of long strips of paper folded accordion-style and painted on both sides (figure 11.1). Only a few of these books, or codices, survived the Spanish Conquest, but they continued to be painted in much the same manner into the Colonial period. Quite a few of these Aztec-style colonial documents have been preserved.

  Figure 11.1 Modern reproduction of an Aztec folded book, the Codex Borgia (1976) (photograph by Mark Schmidt)

  Some manuscripts were painted on deerskin and others on cloth, but most used paper made from the inner bark of the wild fig tree.1 These trees were abundant in the Morelos area, where many towns specialized in papermaking. The Spanish botanist Francisco Hernández observed papermaking in the Morelos town of Tepoztlan in the mid-sixteenth century and wrote a detailed description of the process. The papermaker first stripped the bark off the tree with a stone knife, then soaked it in running water to coagulate the sap. The sap was scraped off, and the bark boiled in an alkaline solution to loosen and separate the fibers. The wet fibers were arranged in layers on a wooden drying board and pounded with a hammer made from a flat, grooved pounder of basalt stone that was bound to a wooden handle. These basalt tools, called bark-beaters, are a commonly found artifact at Aztec sites in Morelos (figure 11.2). Beating the fibers rendered them pliable and fused them together into paper. The papermaker trimmed these sheets to the size and shape desired and polished them with a stone. Finally, a coating of white lime plaster was applied to stiffen the paper and produce a surface for painting. Contemporary Otomi, who live north of the Valley of Mexico, still make paper this way for rituals, and their methods have been adopted by peasants in the state of Guerrero, who make paper for the colorful paintings they sell to tourists and collectors.2

  Figure 11.2 Stone bark-beaters from Yautepec used to pound bark fibers into paper (photograph by Michael E. Smith)

  Books and Scribes

  The Aztecs produced codices and other manuscripts or books for a variety of purposes.3 Religious books such as the Codex Borgia (figure 1.7) contained depictions of gods and ceremonies, along with much information on the 260-day ritual calendar. These books were used by priests for divination and to keep track of rituals. Historical books typically consisted of a list of years in the year-count calendar accompanied by representations of key events in the history of a dynasty. Section one of the Codex Mendoza, the Tira de la Peregrinación (figure 2.4) and the Tira de Tepechpan (figure 2.11) are important examples of historical books. There were several types of administrative books, including tax lists (figures 7.1, 7.5), maps of city-state territories, and records of landholdings. The conqueror Bernal Díaz del Castillo made a note of Motecuhzoma's tax books: “he [Motecuhzoma's steward] kept an account of all the revenue that was brought to Montezuma in his books, which were made of paper – their name for which is amal [amate] – and he had a great house full of these books.”4

  Books and manuscripts were painted by trained scribes, tlacuilo, who were them
selves nobles, or commoners in the service of nobles and priests. Priests and philosophers also learned to write. Friar Sahagún described the scribe as follows:

  The scribe: writings, ink [are] his special skills. [He is] a craftsman, an artist, a user of charcoal, a drawer with charcoal; a painter who dissolves colors, grinds pigments, uses colors.

  The good scribe is honest, circumspect, far-sighted, pensive; a judge of colors, an applier of the colors, who makes shadows, forms feet, face, hair. He paints, applies colors, makes shadows, draws gardens, paints flowers, creates works of art.5

  Professional scribes often specialized in one of the various types of books. The occupation of scribe was hereditary, and the Codex Mendoza illustrates a scribe (painter) teaching his trade to his son (figure 4.9). The central symbol in the figure, two diagonal scrolls within a rectangular frame, is the Aztec glyph that signifies writing or scribal activity.

  Mesoamerican Background to Aztec Writing

  The Aztec writing system was one of five distinct writing systems developed in ancient Mesoamerica; the others are the Maya, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Epi-Olmec.6 Although each of these scripts expressed a different language and had its own patterns of writing, they shared common preoccupations with ruling dynasties, elite affairs, ritual, and calendrics. During the Classic period (AD 150–900) the Maya carved inscriptions on buildings, stelae, and other stone monuments, many of which still survive today. Classic Maya writing was the most complete of the Mesoamerican scripts, capable of recording anything that could be said in the Maya languages. A pre-Maya writing system, the Epi-Olmec script, recently was discovered in the Olmec area of the Mexican Gulf Coast. Although only a limited number of carved inscriptions have been found, linguists John Justeson and Terence Kaufman already have deciphered many of the glyphs.