The Aztecs
Page 29
Cyclical Time and Linear Time
The Aztecs, like other ancient Mesoamerican peoples, were clearly fascinated by repeating cycles of time. Their calendars were cyclical in form, and many consisted of the intersection of two or more cycles. The natural cycles of the seasons, the sun, the stars and the planets were all tracked carefully by priests and astronomers. Repeating cycles were also prominent in Aztec mythology; the myth of multiple creations and destructions – the five suns – is a good example. But there was simultaneously a strong conception of linear time in Aztec society. This is shown most clearly by the continuous year-count annal form of historical codex (figures 2.11 and 11.5).16
The continuous year-count annal was a relatively late innovation of the Mexica and other Aztec groups. Earlier central Mexican and Mixtec pictorial histories took one of two forms: depictions of the deeds of rulers and important persons organized by event, and maps of territories upon which historical persons and actions were placed. These two forms of historical codex continued to be used through the Late Aztec period, but the Aztecs favored the innovative continuous year-count annal for the depiction of dynastic histories. Although the year-count repeated every 52 years, the sequence of year glyphs continued uninterrupted for the entire length of the historical narrative. The very nature of this arrangement of glyphs shows the linear conception of dynastic time and history that was encoded in these codices. This form of historical document was designed to show off the continuous line of rulers, establishing the legitimacy of the ruling dynasty. Historical narrative, like so many aspects of Aztec religion and knowledge, was closely tied to city-state politics, and its form and function served the interests of rulers and nobles.
Technology
The most impressive examples of Aztec technology were in the realms of agriculture (chapter 3) and crafts (chapter 4).17 The Aztecs were not great innovators in these areas; for the most part they took advantage of the advances made by earlier Mesoamerican peoples. Intensive agricultural methods like irrigation, terracing, and raised fields had been around since the Classic period at least, but the Aztecs were the first to put all of these methods to use on a massive scale. Their transformation of the central Mexican landscape to feed the growing population was a real technological achievement.
In the category of craft technology, the examples of obsidian and bronze stand out. The ancient Mesoamerican technique of prismatic blade production – yielding the sharpest edges known to modern science – is one of the premiere achievements of ancient technology anywhere in the world. The Aztecs made some minor modifications to the process of blade production, but for the most part they employed methods that had been practiced for millennia. The technology of bronze production – actually a Tarascan, not Aztec, craft – was quite sophisticated, and Tarascan metallurgists were highly skilled in achieving desired concentrations of copper, tin, and arsenic for specific tools and other objects. Other Aztec crafts with complex technologies include rubber production, textiles, ceramics, lapidary production, and featherworking.
The technology involved in Aztec architecture and construction was also impressive. The lime plaster used for floors and walls was a form of concrete whose production made use of several separate chemical reactions, and some examples remain as hard as modern concrete even after 500 years. Irrigation canals were able to cross rivers and ravines on tall aqueducts, and this technology was used on the canal that brought drinking water across the lake to Tenochtitlan from springs at Chapultepec on the lake shore.18 Architecture and engineering require a system of workable mathematics, and the Aztecs used a base-20 number system for arithmetic, calendrics, and land measurement.19 This numbering system was also crucial for commerce and tax payment since goods were measured by counts and volume, not by weight. As shown above, there were glyphs for quantities of 1, 20, 400, and 8,000. In general, science and technology were practical and empirical, even when applied to religious phenomena. Another area of practical science and technology was medicine.
Medicine
The Aztecs had an extensive body of knowledge and belief concerning health and sickness. Their overall level of health was quite good for a preindustrial population, but many illnesses and injuries were common.20 The Aztecs attributed illnesses to one of three types of causes: supernatural, magical, or natural. Supernatural ailments were sent by the gods as punishment for various transgressions. They were treated by making religious offerings and undergoing confession to a priest. Magical illnesses were caused by a sorcerer known as a tlacatecolotl, literally “owl man.” These malevolent individuals cast spells on others, causing them to become ill or even die. Such spells were diagnosed through divination, often using the method of casting maize kernels (chapter 10). Treatment of magical ailments involved the use of precious stones (e.g., jade, quartz crystals), and often the consumption of exotic substances (e.g., worms, skunk blood, and skunk spray).
More practical diagnoses and cures were carried out by physicians, who treated naturally caused illnesses and injuries. Physicians were learned and experienced men and women. Female curers worked mostly within people's homes, and the chroniclers, who were mostly males and priests, unfortunately provide little information on these important women. Friar Sahagún's Nahua informants described the qualities of a good physician as follows:
The true doctor.
He is a wise man [tlamatini];
he imparts life.
A tried specialist,
he has worked with herbs, stones, trees, and roots.
His remedies have been tested;
he examines, he experiments,
he alleviates sickness.
He massages aches and sets broken bones.
He administers purges and potions;
he bleeds his patients;
he cuts and he sews the wound;
he brings about reactions;
he stanches the bleeding with ashes.21
This description probably applied equally well to male and female physicians.
In the realm of naturally caused ailments and injuries, Aztec medicine was highly empirical and practical. Snakebites were treated by cutting the wound and sucking out the poison. Fractured bones were set successfully, and cures for wounds were very effective. Sahagún described in detail the treatment for a head wound.22 The blood was washed away and the wound cleansed, first with urine, then with maguey sap (known for its curative properties). Next, an ointment of maguey sap and herbs was applied, and the wound bound tightly to keep out the air. If inflammation (infection) occurred, the medicine was applied several times; if not, the wound was kept bandaged until it healed.
The Aztecs used hundreds of medicinal herbs, and modern studies have shown that these had true pharmaceutical value in curing ailments and injuries. Many Aztec medical practices were more effective than those used by early Spanish doctors, and the Spanish emperor soon sent physicians and other scientists to study Aztec medicine and herbs. The priest Motolinía was quite impressed with Aztec physicians: “They have their own skilled doctors who know how to use many herbs and medicines which suffices for them. Some of them have so much experience that they were able to heal Spaniards, who had long suffered from chronic and serious diseases.”23
A common therapeutic practice among the Aztecs was the steam bath. People spent time inside a small stone hut (called a temazcalli, or sweat-bath) in which water was poured on hot rocks to produce steam and high temperatures. In the image in figure 11.7, a woman puts firewood into the fire chamber on the left. Water is shown inside the structure, and the excess water ended up in a catch basin on the right side. The god Tlazolteotl is depicted above the doorway. In the foreground, a (female) curer offers a bowl of water or medicine to a man with an eye ailment. Steam baths were done for both medical and ritual reasons, cleansing the body physically and symbolically. This practice has remained popular among traditional Mesoamerican peasants up to the present.24
Figure 11.7 Curers prepare the sweat-bath for two patients (Code
x Magliabechiano 1983:77r)
Fractured bones were healed by setting the limb with a plaster cast strengthened by a splint. Although fractures were known to be caused by simple injuries, on a symbolic level they were attributed to the mythological quail who caused Quetzalcoatl to drop and break the bones of the ancestors in Mictlan (chapter 9). As a physician set a fracture, he recited a chant acknowledging this mythological association:
Well now,
O Quail,
O One from the Place of Disturbance,
What harm are you doing
To the bone from the Land of the Dead [Mictlan],
Which you have broken,
Which you have smashed? . . .
I am the Priest,
I am the Plumed Serpent [Quetzalcoatl]
I go to the Land of the Dead . . .
There I shall snatch up
The bone of the Land of the Dead.
They have sinned –
The priests,
The dust-birds;
They have shattered something,
They have broken something.
But now we shall glue it,
We shall heal it.25
Chapter 12
Art, Music, and Literature
He who was born on those dates [Ce Xochitl, the day named One Flower], whether a noble or not, became a lover of songs, an entertainer, an actor, an artist.
He bore this in mind, he deserved his well-being, he lived joyfully; he was contented as long as he bore his destiny in mind, as long as he guided himself and made himself worthy of it.
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales
Aztec art was closely integrated into religion, politics, and society. The Aztecs did not appear to have had a concept of “art for art's sake,” although they clearly valued technical ability and aesthetic balance in many diverse artistic media. Many sculptures depicted gods, and monumental carvings and large buildings proclaimed the glory of the city-state. But other sculptures depicted ordinary people, plants, and animals. Paintings were also used in a variety of contexts, from gods and rituals painted in temples to tax records for the city-state to the great deeds of current and past kings. In this chapter I review Aztec art, literature, and music and their significance within Aztec society.
Art
The Mixteca-Puebla Style
Aztec paintings and sculptures were executed in a distinctive style that was an expression of a more widespread phenomenon scholars call the “Mixteca-Puebla style.” The Mixteca-Puebla style evolved out of an earlier tradition of painted pottery produced in coastal Mesoamerica from the Epiclassic through the Early Postclassic periods (AD 750–1150). At that time, standardized religious symbols, such as feathered-serpent designs and the step-fret motif, were painted on ceramic vessels in many areas of Mesoamerica outside of central Mexico. In the Early Aztec period, peoples of the “Mixteca-Puebla region” – southern Puebla and northwestern Oaxaca – adopted many of these symbols and created a painting style that used vivid colors and a standardized, precise, geometric depiction of images. H. B. Nicholson and Eloise Quiñones Keber describe several characteristics of the style: “Imaginative exaggeration of prominent features, strong black outlines, and bright, flat colors, resulted in images of striking boldness and visual impact.”1 Even without the use of color, as in sculptural reliefs or tracings from painted manuscripts, the vivid Mixteca-Puebla images stand out (see figures 9.1, 9.6, 10.2).
Artists in the city of Cholula, at the heart of the Mixteca-Puebla region, probably participated in the creation and elaboration of the Mixteca-Puebla style during the Early Aztec period. Cholula had long been a holy city and pilgrimage center (its central pyramid was the largest in Mesoamerica), and its renowned Cholula Polychrome ceramics (figure 5.7) were painted in the Mixteca-Puebla style. Other examples of the style include Postclassic polychrome ceramics from Puebla, Tlaxcalla, the Mixtec region, and the southern Valley of Mexico (figure 9.6); mural paintings from the Mixteca-Puebla area; and the Mixtec codices. In the Late Aztec period, Artists throughout central Mexico adopted the Mixteca-Puebla style for their painted manuscripts, such as the Codex Borgia (figure 1.7), and sculptural reliefs (figures 9.1, 12.4–12.6, 12.7 below).
Aztec manuscripts and sculptures in the Mixteca-Puebla style were produced by scribes and artists for the use of the nobility. The widespread adoption of this style throughout central Mexico was facilitated by the network of interaction within the Aztec noble class described in chapter 6. The use and enjoyment of objects decorated with the Mixteca-Puebla style was not limited to the nobility, however. Commoners had ready access to the polychrome ceramics of Cholula and other areas through the market system, and fragments of these vessels are not uncommon in commoner contexts at Aztec sites. This style was so popular in Late Aztec Mesoamerica that it spread far beyond the central Mexican highlands. Manuscripts and murals painted in the Mixteca-Puebla style have been found in several of the distant, outer provinces of the Aztec Empire. Similar murals were also painted at Tulum on the Caribbean coast of Yucatan and in highland western Guatemala, Maya-speaking areas outside of the empire. The Aztecs were part of the Mesoamerican world system, a social universe far more extensive than the territory of their empire. The distribution of the Mixteca-Puebla style is graphic evidence for the economic and cultural integration of Postclassic Mesoamerica.2
The Art and Politics of Imperial Sculpture
Stone sculpture was a major medium of Aztec art,3 and Aztec sculptors far surpassed earlier Mesoamerican artists in technical and aesthetic abilities. A sculpture of a man carrying a cacao pod (figure 12.1) shows the realism of many Aztec pieces. Animals were frequent subjects of the sculptors, and snakes were the most often portrayed. Some snakes were carved naturalistically (figure 12.2); others were stylized representations of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered-serpent god. Jaguars were the next most commonly carved animal, and many of these images convey a sense of power (figure 12.3) befitting the importance of the jaguar in Aztec thought. Jaguar warriors were the elite troops, Tezcatlipoca had jaguar associations, and kings sat on jaguar skin thrones.
Figure 12.1 Sculpture of a man holding a cacao pod (height 35 cm) (photograph courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum, 40.16, Museum Collection Fund)
Figure 12.2 Sculpture of a snake (diameter 61 cm) (© Dumbarton Oaks, Pre-Columbian Collection, Washington, DC)
Figure 12.3 Sculpture of a jaguar (length 28 cm) (photograph courtesy of The Brooklyn Museum, 38.45, Carl de Silver Fund)
Deities were another popular subject of sculptors, and ritual objects such as stone boxes (figure 10.4), bowls, and panels were also common. These small- and medium-sized sculptures of humans, animals, deities, and ritual objects, were carved in many city-states throughout the Aztec heartland. Numerous small stone sculptures were excavated at Calixtlahuaca, and some examples were even found in my excavations at Cuexcomate, which shows that their use was not limited to the Valley of Mexico or to the imperial capitals. After the Triple Alliance Empire came to power, however, a new school of monumental imperial stonecarving developed in Tenochtitlan.
Mexica sculptors drew on the stylistic elements and iconography of the Mixteca-Puebla style to create huge, relief-covered, stone monuments that glorified the state and empire. Teams of carvers, who worked for the king and other state officials, created some of the most dramatic monuments of the ancient New World. Through their size, composition, and iconography, these huge sculptures were intended to communicate explicit messages about the might and legitimacy of the empire. The basic themes or messages of Mexica imperial sculpture were that the Mexica possessed the religious and political right to rule the world, that they had inherited this right from the ancient civilizations of Teotihuacan and the Toltecs, and that the empire enjoyed a cosmic significance beyond mere politics.
Imperial stone monuments portrayed the cosmic structure of the universe and associated the empire with cosmic principles in order to legitimize the actions of its imperial leaders. The “Temple
of Sacred Warfare” was a powerfully symbolic monument that brought the political content of Aztec sculpture to the forefront (figure 12.4). A massive model of a temple-pyramid, it was decorated with relief carvings on all sides that illustrated the themes of warfare, human sacrifice and death, autosacrifice, the sun, and the founding of Tenochtitlan. The overarching message portrayed on this sculpture was that war was a sacred obligation because it was waged to capture victims for sacrifice and that just as human sacrifice and autosacrifice were carried out for the sun to ensure that it would rise, so too were they required for the continuing glory of the imperial capital Tenochtitlan.
Figure 12.4 Temple of Sacred Warfare sculpture (height 1.22 m) (photograph by Michael E. Smith; reproduced with permission of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia)
The so-called “Aztec calendar stone,” the best-known Aztec monument, was another imperial sculpture that proclaimed the glory and legitimacy of Mexica rule (figures 12.5, 12.6). Research by art historian Richard Townsend suggests that this colossal monument (3.6 m in diameter and 25.4 tons in weight) was originally set horizontally, not vertically as it now stands in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City. The central figure, the sun god Tonatiuh, was a death god in the Mictlantecuhtli complex.4 The creation of the earth was symbolized by glyphs for the four previous suns or creations. The date 13 Acatl, prominently displayed at the top of the disk, was the year of the creation of the present sun, and it also marked the year of the accession of Itzcoatl, the Mexica king who created the Aztec Empire. This correspondence of dates was significant, for it gave the temporal political event a cosmic importance.