The Teocalli of Sacred Warfare and late imperial calendrical rhetoric in the court of Moteuczoma II
2017; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 67-68; Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/693995
ISSN2327-9621
Autores Tópico(s)Latin American history and culture
ResumoPrevious articleNext article FreeThe Teocalli of Sacred Warfare and late imperial calendrical rhetoric in the court of Moteuczoma IIWilliam L. BarnesWilliam L. Barnes Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAs the year 1506 approached in central Mexico, the Aztec ruler Moteuczoma II commissioned a number of monuments that marked the coming New Fire Ceremony and the close of the great fifty-two-year cycle. The best preserved and most complex of these monuments is the famous Temple Stone of Moteuczoma II, also known as the Teocalli of Sacred Warfare (fig. 1). This work, commissioned by a highly educated Aztec noble, embodies within its iconographic program many aspects of “flowery speech”—the complex and poetical form of address used by Aztec nobility.Figure 1. The Teocalli of Sacred Warfare (front and side views), ca. 1507. Mexica. Volcanic stone, 123 × 92 × 100 cm. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv. 10-81548. Photos by author.Carved on all exposed surfaces, the Teocalli’s glyphs and imagery are organized into a series of interrelated groups. These groupings, I argue, echo the couplets and paired couplets that define Nahuatl high discourse. Moteuczoma II’s artists employed this rhetoric to reference significant calendrical cycles and important ceremonies that reinforced Tenochca-Mexica (Aztec) claims of divine guidance and elevated their dynastic and corporate history to sacred narrative on par with the story of creation.The visual and Nahuatl high discourseVisual matter and oral tradition were not separate or distinct in pre-Hispanic central Mexico. As art historian Elizabeth Boone writes, most pictorial works “are closer to being scripts, and their relation to the readers is closer to being that of a play’s script to its actors” (Boone 1994, 71). As prompts for speech, Aztec visual works are fertile ground for identifying structures employed in such discourse.1A fundamental component of Mesoamerican literature and discourse is the use of syntactic and/or semantic couplets (Edmonson 1985, 2), as noted very early on by European authors transcribing the first Nahuatl texts (Montes de Oca 2004, 70). The study of these couplets as a literary phenomenon began with the works of Mexican anthropologist and philologist Ángel María Garibay K. (1971), who noted that paired concepts and coupled parallel phrases, or difrasismo (diphrasism), were used as mnemonic devices when memorizing and reciting extensive oral texts: “The same thought expressed twice, clothed in two different images, is like a double hammer blow that sinks the nail” (Garibay K. 1971, 1:421).2 Paired concepts and diphrastic structures frame a central concept and often rely upon metaphor and metonymy in order to lead a reader/listener to the intended meaning.3 The complexity of this system was scalable, ranging from simple paired noun phrases to more complex statements made of multiple paired, and often nested, phrases. An example of simple pairing would be the nominal semantic couplet in cueitl in huipil (the skirt, the blouse), which uses articles of women’s clothing to metonymically reference the concept of cihuatl (woman).Classical Nahuatl couplets often have considerable semantic distance between the constitutive elements and the derived meaning. Such forms, as illustrated by linguist Mercedes Montes de Oca Vega (2004, 72), were intended to convey their derived meaning in an honorific or elevated fashion. These “distanced” couplets are usually contextually dependent. They include the Nahuatl phrases in atl, in tepetl, more commonly combined as altepetl (the water, the hill) to refer to a polity; in atlapalli, in cuitlatpilli (the wing, the tail), referring to commoners; and in tlilli, in tlapalli (the black, the red), used to reference both books and, in a greater sense, knowledge and wisdom. Perhaps the most apropos of these simple couplets for this study is teoatl tlachinolli (divine water [blood], burned land), the principal metaphor for sacred warfare (Sahagún 1997, 235).4 The complexity of this pairing is also magnified by its semantic antipathy with inatl, in tepetl. Often shortened as atl tlachinolli, this pairing appears in glyphic form across the surface of the Teocalli and was a centerpiece for Alfonso Caso’s (1927) seminal essay on the work.In each of these distanced couplets, the derived meaning requires an additional cognitive step, as it is separated by a contextually dependent referent. Polities and birds are very different, but both have their essential dependencies: birds cannot fly without wings and tails, while the polity is “moved” by the labor of commoners. A similar leap is required with “the black / the red.” While a book is made using red and black ink, as explained by Montes de Oca (2004, 78), the derived meaning of “knowledge” uses books as a “metaphoric extension … a subdomain that accounts for the way in which knowledge was preserved.” Aside from its mnemonic functions and honorific qualities, Montes de Oca (2000; 2004; 2008, 225–26) has shown that Nahuatl diphrasism is also a marker of ritual speech employed by nobles and priests in imitation of the gods. When employed in elite rhetoric, it served to emphasize the significance of the utterance while simultaneously underscoring the speaker’s elevated status.Such speakers are mentioned in the 1524 Colloquies of the Twelve, where the priests and elders who delivered sacred instructional speeches called huehuetlahtolli are called “those who observe the codices, those who recite. Those who noisily turn the pages of the illustrated manuscripts. Those who have possession of the black and red ink” (León-Portilla 1963, 19). The authors of this passage then present us with a chiasmus that is both semantically and structurally diphrastic: those who observe the painted books (A) are those who recite (B), and those who turn the pages noisily (B)—as they are reciting—are those who possess knowledge/books (A). As such structures existed not only in Nahuatl high discourse, but also in descriptions of learned Nahuas, it would be unusual if they could not be discerned in the visual material that artists used to record the difrasismos that the priests and elders recited.As one of the most iconographically complex Aztec monuments yet discovered, the Teocalli is a logical place to look for such structures. Rather than presenting a wholesale overview of the monument, my goal here is to draw these constructions together in order to recover some portion of the monument’s encoded ritual speech.The form of the TeocalliCarved of a single block of stone, the Teocalli of Sacred Warfare, also known as the Temple Stone, is covered with low relief carvings and consists of a lower truncated pyramid section and an upright rectangle set flush with the back of the monument. The principal face of the monument (fig. 2a) recalls a Mesoamerican pyramid replete with a carved stair that recedes from the lower edge to its upper lip. Balustrades flank this stair, each adorned with a hieroglyphic year date and a cuauhxicalli offering vessel. Artists carved shields, banners, and projectiles on the horizontal shelf at the top of the stairs (fig. 3, bottom). They flank the splayed figure of the Aztec earth deity, which is oriented so that its split-profile face and open flinty mouth greets the carved stairway. Its clawed feet touch the inset vertical slab, whose facade carries a central solar disk flanked by two elaborately costumed figures (fig. 2a). The sides of the lower portion are carved with pairs of figures who face toward the front, while the sides of the upper portion display elaborate date glyphs (figs. 2b–c). The flat top of the monument (fig. 3,center) has two paper fire serpents flanking a date glyph sitting within a smoking zacatapayolli (a sacrificial receptacle of plaited grass). An uninterrupted relief group covers the flat back portion of the monument (fig. 2d. Its central motif is an eagle perched atop a prickly pear cactus that grows from the torso of a mostly effaced reclining figure. This figure is placed against a wave-covered watery background.Figure 2. The various surfaces of the Teocalli of Sacred Warfare. (a) The front of the monument. (b) The left-hand side of the monument. (c) The right-hand side of the monument. (d) The back of the monument. Drawings courtesy of Emily Umberger.Figure 3. The central “linear” text of the Teocalli of Sacred Warfare, with (from bottom to top) the “seat,” “backrest,” top, and back reliefs. Drawings courtesy of Emily Umberger; arrangement by the author.Numerous scholars have addressed the Teocalli and its iconography since its initial discovery in 1831 and its eventual recovery in 1926. In the first comprehensive study of the monument, Mexican scholar Alfonso Caso (1927) gave it the name Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada (Teocalli [i.e., Temple] of Sacred Warfare). Caso’s detailed study related the history of the monument’s recovery and addressed its form and iconography. In it, he developed an ideological rationale for the work: a blood-debt owed the gods for their generative self-sacrifice that created the current sun and set it in motion. Caso suggested that because the sun was birthed by divine blood, it subsequently required sanguinary nourishment. This need was then the driving force behind Aztec militarism and the waging of ritualized “flowery wars” wherein one could obtain valorous sacrificial victims.5Figure 4. “Exploded” view of the Teocalli of Sacred Warfare. Drawings courtesy of Emily Umberger; arrangement by the author.Figure 5. “Exploded” view of the Teocalli of Sacred Warfare with principal year-bearer dates marked. Drawings courtesy of Emily Umberger; arrangement and additions by the author.Figure 6. The “interior” group of the Teocalli of Sacred Warfare, showing trecena patron pairs. Drawings courtesy of Emily Umberger; arrangement and additions by the author.Figure 7. The Dedication Stone, ca. 1487. Mexica. Diorite, 92 × 62 × 30 cm. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv. 10-220919. Drawing courtesy of Emily Umberger.The current study differs from Caso’s in that it focuses principally on the date glyphs included on the monument, using them as a key to its iconographic program. Most studies agree that the sculpture can be dated to the reign of Moteuczoma II (ca. 1502–20), the last pre-Hispanic Aztec ruler, and was likely carved between his accession and the 1507, 2 Reed New Fire Ceremony (see table 1).6 According to various sixteenth-century chroniclers (Davies 1987, 90), Moteuczoma II initiated an elitist palace coup following his accession. He replaced the commoner functionaries appointed by his predecessor with educated nobility, even for the humblest positions. It is not surprising, then, that there was an increase in the visual and thematic complexity of works commissioned during Moteuczoma II’s reign—works that reflected noble high discourse and flowery speech in their glyphic and iconographic programs.Table 1. 52-year count and huehuetiliztli.Even the Temple Stone’s general form is encoded with symbolic complexity. As first noted by Caso (1927, 10), the 1.23 meter tall stone is a small-scale replica of a Mesoamerican pyramid replete with stair, balustrade, upper plaza, and temple/superstructure. Emily Umberger (1984, 81) suggested that the monument was likely meant to recall Tenochtitlan’s pyramid of the solar deity Tonatiuh, whose east-facing stair gave it an unusual westerly orientation (the reverse of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan). At Tonatiuh’s temple, according to sixteenth-century Dominican friar Diego Durán (1984, 1:107), a “messenger to the sun” climbed the eastern stair, following the sun’s westward movement toward midday when, on reaching the top, he was sacrificed. Indeed, when one “climbs” to the top of the frontal stair on the Teocalli, one is met with a stylized image of the sun sitting proudly at its zenith.Additionally, Umberger (1981, 185; 1984, 78–83) identified the Teocalli as a type of shrine and/or sacrificial stone dedicated to the major central Mexican deity Tezcatlipoca, patron of royalty. Called momoztli, such objects were erected at crossroads, on plazas, and in royal palaces (de Torquemada 1986, 2:40) in order to remind one of the omnipresence of Tezcatlipoca. The Temple Stone also resembles, as Umberger (1981, 172–93; 1984; citing Ekholm 1953) showed, the elaborate woven thrones, or icpalli, used by Aztec rulers. The monument’s human scale, and the presence of Moteuczoma II’s name glyph near the figure to the right of the solar disk, suggested to her that the work was meant to serve as a symbolic throne for Moteuczoma II.The simple form of the monument then manages to elicit simultaneous references to pyramids, temples (in particular, the solar temple of Tonatiuh), Tezcatlipoca shrines, and royal thrones. Expanding upon Umberger’s suggestion that momoztli also served as sacrificial stones, it is likely that the upper trapezoidal segment of the Teocalli was intended to clearly recall, or be used as, a sacrificial stone or techcatl (Barnes 2009, 362–63). These sacrificial stones were located atop pyramids, immediately in front of the principal temple (Graulich 1993), such as the trapezoidal stone still in situ at the Templo Mayor excavations in Mexico City. Hence the upper portion of the Teocalli can be seen to metaphorically represent a temple, as well as the sacrificial stone that would have been placed before it atop the pyramid.7Layered atop the references to pyramids, momoztli, temples, and sacrificial stones is the monument’s association with royal icpalli. This humble plaited royal throne, called in Bernardino de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex (1969, 44) an “awesome home for the gods,” is also said to be the place where the god (Tezcatlipoca) “is given a proxy” in the ruler, and is “where thou speakest from within one, … where thou makest one thy mouth, thy jaw” (Sahagún 1969, 43–44). Royal thrones are seen as the abodes of the gods, the places where they become manifest in the person of the ruler and, hence, symbols of divine presence in the same way as temples and momoztli.The basic form of the Teocalli then links the principal features of Aztec religion—temples, shrines, and sacrifice—with the principle of royal authority. Royal authority is cast as a component of religious devotion, and rulers themselves are shown to be evidence of supernal presence in the world. Given that such an argument is encoded in the simple form of the monument, what might one then expect from the complex imagery and glyphs covering it?The iconography of the TeocalliThe most prominent paired year dates on the Teocalli flank the frontal stair (fig. 2a). These two dates, 1 Rabbit on the left and 2 Reed on the right, serve to anchor a string of associated elements that extends vertically to the top of the monument. As a base couplet, 1 Rabbit and 2 Reed have historical, ritual, and mythological significance. In a historical sense, they reference the years 1506 and 1507 CE of Moteuczoma II’s reign and serve as a terminus ante quem for the sculpture. They also have important ritual significance. Year 1 Rabbit (table 2a) is the first year in the great fifty-two-year cycle (sometimes called the calendar round) and is followed immediately by 2 Reed (table 2b) wherein the Aztecs celebrated the start of a new cycle with the New Fire Ceremony (Xiuhmolpilli [Binding of the years]). This important ritual is the reason for the small knotted rope that “binds” the 2 Reed glyph. In terms of Aztec sacred stories, 1 Rabbit was the symbolic birth year of the earth and 2 Reed commemorated Tezcatlipoca’s drilling of the first fire at the start of the current era. In addition, 2 Reed hosts the first uninterrupted 260-day count, or tonalpohualli, of the new cycle (table 2b).8Table 2a. Year 1/52. In tables 2a–d, differing tonalpohualli are indicated by variant shades of gray, and trecena initials are white.Table 2b. Year 2/52. This year would host the first uninterrupted tonalpohualli of the 52-year cycle (light gray).Above the year dates are two cuauhxicalli offering vessels, the left one decorated with jaguar rosettes and the right one decorated with eagle feathers, recalling the esteemed Jaguar and Eagle knights (fig. 2a) Directly above these vessels, on the horizontal “seat” of the monument, are paired projectile, shield, and banner motifs (fig. 3, bottom), these being the Aztec symbols of warfare and its attendant sacrifice (Boone 2000, 33). The left grouping consists of atlatl (spear thrower) darts and a shield adorned with eagle down. The other has an unadorned shield atop a clutch of stone-tipped arrows, weapon of choice for the migratory Chichimeca (Barnes 2009, 359–94).If we consider these reliefs as a group, the left would consist of the 1 Rabbit date, a jaguar cuauhxicalli, and symbols of “Toltec” civilized warfare (Hassig 1988, 97). The right group then consists of the 2 Reed date, the eagle-feather cuauhxicalli, and symbols of Chichimec military prowess. The coupled dates 1 Rabbit and 2 Reed, along with these elements, can thus be seen to reference the beginning of time and civilization, and the beginnings of the Aztec people grounded in their shared Toltec and Chichimec heritage.These paired “columns” of iconography continue on the upper portion of the Teocalli (fig. 2a; fig. 3, lower) where two individuals flank the solar disk. While debate continues about the identification of these two flanking figures, the iconographic and calendrical evidence discussed below supports Caso’s (1927) and Umberger’s (1981, 176; 1984, 73–78) identification of the individual on the right as Moteuczoma II and the individual on the left as Huitzilopochtli, tutelary god of the Aztecs.9With the Teocalli echoing the west-facing temple of Tonatiuh in Tenochtitlan, the figure of Huitzilopochtli is then on the left-hand side of the zenith sun, befitting his name, which means “hummingbird on the left” (see Karttunen 1992, 91). Carved immediately behind him (on the side of the “backrest”) is an elaborate 1 Flint date glyph (fig. 3, upper). This is his principal feast day and calendrical name-day (Sahagún 1979a, 77).Moteuczoma then stands on the northern portion of the monument. To the north was the land of the dead and the Chichimeca.10 This Chichimec connection is emphasized with Moteuczoma’s heron-feather aztaxelli hair ornament (Nicholson 1967, 73) and jaguar skin costume. While this costume echoes those worn by Jaguar knights, Barnes (2009, 101–8, 352, 394) suggested that it is more likely the Ocelototec costume listed among the ruler’s regalia by Sahagún (1979b, 33–35). The lack of a smoking mirror glyph at the ruler’s temple here (as worn by Huitzilopochtli across from him) lessens the likelihood that this is an obvious Tepeyolotl costume—Tepeyolotl being a Tezcatlipoca avatar with jaguar characteristics. Following Seler (1904, 68; 1992, 49), Barnes (2009, 108) also argued that this costume signified the wearer’s authority over the earth and underworld. Its presence here is also related to the honorific tlalticpac oquichtli, tlalticpac tiacauh (earth warrior, earth chieftain) given to those who gained fame for taking captives (Sahagún 1979a, 36) and who were celebrated on the day 1 Death.An elaborate date glyph of 1 Death is carved directly behind this figure on the side of the monument (fig. 2b, upper). One of the principal name-days of Tezcatlipoca (Sahagún 1979a, 33), here it would stress this deity’s role as royal patron, as well as strengthening the sculpture’s metaphorical associations with momoztli shrines and royal icpalli (both metaphorical “homes” of Tezcatlipoca).These figures then create a flanking vertical text on the monument that consists of:• Huitzilopochtli: divine leader of the Aztecs• Toltec shield-and-darts• Jaguar cuauhxicalli• 1 Rabbit year date (birth of the earth and time)• Moteuczoma: earthly leader of the Aztecs (and host of Tezcatlipoca)• Chichimec shield-and-arrows• Eagle cuauhxicalli• 2 Reed year date (birth of fire and the calendar)These flanking iconographic stanzas (as fig. 4 shows) create a conceptual frame for the Teocalli’s central relief components, which include the figure of the earth deity Tlalteuctli and the central solar disk on the front of the monument, the central 2 House group atop the monument, and the expansive relief group on the back.The 2 House dateAs the only other year-bearer date clearly placed within a cartouche, the 2 House date is also the only date carved upon a horizontal surface. As the twenty-eighth year in the count of fifty-two (see table 1 for a list of the fifty-two years in sequence), this date was likely thought of in Aztec times as the second year in the second half of the fifty-two-year count.11 This would then cast it as an analog of the year 2 Reed on the front of the monument, the second year in the first half of the fifty-two-year count.As 2 Reed is paired with its leading year, 1 Rabbit, one would expect to see 2 House paired in some way with its forerunner, 1 Flint (the first year in the second half of the fifty-two-year cycle). However, the year 1 Flint, illustrated within a year-bearer cartouche, is not explicitly stated on the monument. Yet, as discussed below, one can discern an implicit reference to it in the design of the monument (see fig. 5 for a list of dates on the monument).Moteuczoma II commissioned the Teocalli at some point before 1507. Hence, the last year, 2 House, would have fallen twenty-six years earlier, in 1481 (see table 1). Why, then, include it on the monument along with the contemporary 1 Rabbit 1506 and 2 Reed 1507 dates? There are, I believe, two principal reasons. The first reason addresses dynastic and historic concerns, while the second has a more mythic rationale.Moteuczoma II was preceded in office by three rulers who were brothers. His father, Axayacatl, was the first of these and died some twenty-two years before Moteuczoma II assumed the throne. The reign of Moteuczoma II thus marked a generational shift in rulership (as did his father’s), and his election would have surely renewed historical interest in his father’s reign.A majority of central Mexican ethnohistoric sources record that Axayacatl died in 2 House 1481 (Boone 1992, 153). The chronicler Diego Durán states that he died soon after a great sacrificial festival in which he dedicated a grand new solar monument (Durán 1994, 288–90). Taken as a group, the 2 House glyph, the solar disk, and its flanking Aztec ruler can easily be understood as a shorthand reference to the deceased Axayacatl. His death may also explain why the Teocalli artists placed this 2 House date within a sacrificial zacatapayolli—for his demise is then cast as the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. It was the sacrifice of the gods, as Caso (1927) reminds us, which gave birth to the current sun and set it in motion, and from the viewpoint of 1507, Axayacatl’s “sacrifice” gave motion to the reign of Moteuczoma II. The solar disk on the Teocalli can then be seen as a sculpture of a sculpture; it is an echo of Axayacatl’s last imperial commission. Indeed, according to Durán, by 1506 Moteuczoma II had commissioned an even grander “echo” of his father’s work, known today as the Aztec Calendar Stone (Piedra del Sol). The Calendar Stone also retrospectively references Axayacatl’s reign (Barnes 2015).The year 2 House, despite its location at the middle of the fifty-two-year count, was also a year of “beginnings” as the traditional date of Tenochtitlan’s foundation. This was the year in which the still semi-nomadic Aztecs finally saw the vision prophesied by Huitzilopochtli: an eagle perched atop a prickly pear cactus, the subject of the Teocalli’s rear relief (fig. 2d). Upon the spot where this cactus grew—a small island in Lake Texcoco—they built their city of Tenochtitlan. In 1506, the just-completed fifty-two-year calendar round marked the close of the fourth cycle celebrated since the one that had hosted the foundation of Tenochtitlan.Four calendar rounds comprise a double, or paired, huehuetiliztli (“great binding”; see table 1) Called a gavillo (binding) by Sahagún (1979a, 143), a huehuetiliztli was made up of two fifty-two-year halves (see also Palacios 1921; Caso 1958), and as discussed below, had significant associations with the planet Venus. As noted by Caso (1971, 348), the Aztecs considered the huehuetiliztli to be “the most perfect cyclical period.” This greater coupled period of two huehuetiliztli is likely emphasized on the Teocalli by two paired iconographic couplets: (1) the New Fire dates (1 Rabbit and 2 Reed) paired with the rising sun on the front of the monument, and (2) the 2 House date atop the monument paired with the Tenochtitlan foundation scene. The first couplet references the start of time and the cosmos, while the second references the beginning of Aztec hegemony. In this juxtaposition, equal weight is given to both. Garibay’s “nail” is sunk with these difrasismos: the creation of the cosmos is equated with the genesis of the Aztec polity.2 Reed and 2 House were the second years in their respective halves of the fifty-two-year calendar round (see table 1). As shown by Umberger (1987), the Aztecs conceived of the two halves of the fifty-two-year count differently. The first half was one of darkness and events occurring in the deepest mythic (presolar) past. The second half was one of light, wherein the greatest Mexica/Aztec events take place. This split is illustrated in the iconographic organization of the Teocalli. Date glyphs and events related to the first half of the count occupy the lower front of the monument. 2 House, which falls in the second half of the count, and its related events are placed on the top and back of the monument.Table 2c. Year 26/52 with the two 4 Movement dates highlighted, using the Caso (1967) veintena order. The placement of the second 4 Movement would change using Tena’s (1987) variant scheme; the first would not.Table 2d. Year 27/52 with the variant 1 Death–1 Flint periods and 4 Movement highlighted.The 1 Flint / 1 Flint datesThere are only three clearly delineated year-glyphs on the Teocalli: 1 Rabbit, 2 Reed, and 2 House. As the monument is covered with paired elements from top to bottom, this might seem unusual: symmetry seems to demand a clearly identifiable 1 Flint year-bearer. Its absence here is likely due to what Umberger (1981, 281) identified as an Aztec reluctance to include the year1 Flint within a cartouche on carved monuments. Here, this avoidance provided the Teocalli artists with an opportunity to display their skills in employing highly complex calendrical rhetoric in order to implicitly reference the year 1 Flint.There is, of course, a 1 Flint glyph on the monument, yet the lack of a square encompassing box signifies that this carved date is simply a day from the 260-day divinatory calendar, the tonalpohualli, not a year in the calendar round. As a tonalpohualli day, 1 Flint first and foremost serves as the name-day of Huitzilopochtli. As do all dates with a coefficient of one, it also serves to identify its entire thirteen-day trecena. Trecena were the “weeks” of the 260-day divinatory calendar. There were twenty trecenas in all, and the trecena of 1 Flint closes the divinatory calendar’s second sixty-five-day quarter (see table 3). This second quarter of the tonalpohualli begins with the 1 Death trecena whose principal day is, as noted, the name-day of Tezcatlipoca.12 That both of these bracketing dates are carved upon the sides of the Teocalli makes it clear that its patrons intentionally highlighted this tonalpohualli period.Table 3. The 20 trecena of the tonalpohualliin order and grouped into 65-day quarters. The 1 Death–1 Flint period is highlighted.The 260-day tonalpohualli was, principally, a divinatory calendar. Specific days and periodicities within the count served a mantic purpose. As noted by Emily Umberger (1987), many of these days and periods were seen to echo, in miniature, larger annual cycles. A twenty-day, forty-day, fifty-two-day, sixty-five-day, etc. period in the tonalpohualli could be used to divine the significance of past and future yearly analogs. In a broader sense, then, the sixty-five-day period referenced on the Teocalli could be read to divine the sixty-five years of one and one-quarter calendar rounds (52 + 13).A sixty-five-year period, when viewed from 1506–7, would have been quite significant to Moteuczoma II both in retrospect and in prospect. Retrospectively, sixty-five years earlier, in 1 House 1441, his namesake and great grandfather, Moteuczoma I, had assumed office. Sixty-five years before this, in 1 Flint 1376, the first Aztec tlatoani, Acamapichtli, had assumed office and established the Tenochca royal line. Prospectively, thirteen years hence would mark the year 1 Reed 1519. 1 Reed is the traditional birth/death year of the Aztec deity/demigod Quetzalcoatl as well as the most likely birth year of Moteuczoma II.13 In an elegant fashion, these dates then reference the foundation of the royal line in Tenochtitlan, the accession of Moteuczoma II’s namesake, and the current ruler’s own coming fifty-two-year “centenary” celebration.In any sixty-five-day tonalpohualli quarter (5 × trecena), there are fifty-two days (4 × trecena) that are bracketed by the initial days of the first trecena and the start of the concluding trecena. For example, fifty-two days separate the days 1 Death and 1 Flint—yet an inclusive count of the 1 Death–1 Flint trecena range totals sixty-five. By referencing a day that starts a tonalpohualli quarter (i.e., 1 Death) and a day that starts its concluding period (i.e., 1 Flint), artists
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