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Fifth Sun Rising

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Fifth Sun Rising chapter 6 Fifth Sun Rising Known in Nahuatl as mamalhuaztli or tlecuahuitl, the fire-making instrument is an indicator (index) of a well-documented crucial ceremony, which could have different functions and occur at different moments in time. The New Fire rituals marked diverse ceremonial cycles, generally in units of 52 years. The best-known example is that of the Aztec calendar round celebration or ‘Bind- ing of the Years’ (xiuhmolpilli) in the year 2 Reed (which corresponds to the Ñuu Dzaui year 1 Reed). But there were many others. In the previous chapter we saw that Codex Yuta Tnoho (Vindobonensis), pp. 47–38, lists the sacred founda- tion dates of the kingdoms and dynasties of Ñuu Dzaui, and then proceeds to explain that these were related to the New Fire ceremonies celebrated by the founding fathers and mothers in the four directions and in other places of specific importance. The Roll of the New Fire (Selden Roll) demonstrates that the New Fire ceremony formed part of the foundation of the Toltec dynasty of Coixtlahuaca. In general, we may say that this ceremony was also performed to mark the inauguration of a new place for worship, i.e. the founding of a temple or the completion of a new construction phase of an important religious build- ing, as well as new periods (calendar cycles) in religious life.1 Here we will discuss a number of different examples from Aztec visual art and focus on the ideological aspects of the ceremony.2 These examples are, of course, from a later date than the treasure deposited in Tomb 7 at Monte Al- bán, but they shed light on the meaning of the ritual complex to which Tomb 7 belonged. Concretely we will comment on the preparation and performance of this ritual in 1507, in the time of the Aztec ruler (tlatoani, ‘speaker’) Moct- ezuma ii, when it marked the passage of one calendar round of 52 years to another. That event – the last occurrence in the precolonial period – is the central theme of the calendar in Codex Cihuacoatl (Borbonicus).3 Here we will encounter both the goddess Cihuacoatl and her high priest, the cihuacoatl of- ficial, but also yet another aspect of the Quetzalcoatl narrative. 1 See Dehouve (2001) for a discussion of the present-day form of the New Fire ceremony among the Tlapanec people, and Elson and Smith (2001) for an analysis of archaeological traces. 2 The development of scholarly thought on the history and social structure of the Aztec realm is reflected in successive overview works such as those by Van Giffen-Duyvis (1957), Van Zantwijk (1985), Gillespie (1989), Clendinnen (1995), and Smith (2011). 3 See the editions and commentaries by Nowotny and Durand-Forest (1974), Anders and Jan- sen (1991). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi �0.Maarten��63/97890043405 Jansen and Gabina�7_008 Aurora Pérez Jiménez - 9789004340527 Downloaded from Brill.com10/11/2021 08:49:41AM via free access <UN> Fifth Sun Rising 359 We have to take into account such cosmological and political dimensions of the New Fire ritual when we want to understand the presence of the fire- making instrument in the Temple of Jewels, i.e. in the type of ceremonial cen- tre to which Tomb 7 belonged. 1 The Inauguration of the Templo Mayor A New Fire ceremony was celebrated to inaugurate a large extension of the Templo Mayor, the main temple in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. The pictorial record of the early colonial codices known as Telleriano-Remensis (f. 39r) and Vaticanus A (f. 83r), shows how this ceremony was performed in that temple in the Aztec year 8 Reed (1487). Immediately before, in the year 7 Rabbit (1486), the Aztec ruler Tizoc had died, as is indicated by the painting of his mortuary bundle and an explanatory text.4 It was his successor Ahuizotl who in the next year inaugurated the extension and renewal of the Templo Mayor. The temple itself is represented in its characteristic manner as a double temple: on one side the cloud temple of the rain god Tlaloc and on the other the temple of Huitzilopochtli, here characterised by a fire serpent. The codices Telleriano-Remensis and Vaticanus A present the Templo May- or in mirror image. When one stands in front, the temple of Huitzilopochtli is on the right-hand side (South) and the temple of Tlaloc on the left-hand side (North). This corresponds to the cosmic order: the rainy season (summer) is the time when the sun is in the northern half of the sky, while the dry season (winter) is when the sun passes through the southern part. The layout of the temple was done so that the sun rose between the two temples at the spring equinox.5 The Spanish commentary of Codex Telleriano-Remensis, p. 39r, says that in the year 1487 the work on the construction and expansion of the great tem- ple of Mexico was finished and that the old men say that in that year 4,000 men were sacrificed, assembled from the provinces that had been subjugated through war.6 The pictorial text gives the number in the form of ten hair-like 4 The Nahua historian Tezozomoc describes the funerary ceremonies for Tizoc in detail in his Crónica Mexicana (1975: Ch. 60). 5 See the discussion of the symbolic aspects of the Templo Mayor (with corresponding bib- liographical references) in the commentary on Codex Mictlan (Laud) by Anders and Jansen (1994: Ch. iv). 6 ‘Año de ocho cañas y de 1487 segun n[uest]ra quenta se hacavo de hazer y perfiçionar el cu grande de mexico dizen los viexos que se sacrificaron en este año quatro mil onbres traydos Maarten Jansen and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez - 9789004340527 Downloaded from Brill.com10/11/2021 08:49:41AM via free access <UN> 360 chapter 6 Illustration 6.01 Codex Telleriano-Remensis, f. 39r: the inauguration of the Templo Mayor in 1487 under the rule of Ahuizotl. de las provinçias que havian sujetado por guerra. Por cada rramito destos negritos quentan ençima dan a entender quatroçientos o numero de cuatroçientos’. For an edition of the Co- dex Telliano-Remensis see Quiñones Keber (1995); for the Vaticanus A: Anders and Jansen (1996a). Maarten Jansen and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez - 9789004340527 Downloaded from Brill.com10/11/2021 08:49:41AM via free access <UN> Fifth Sun Rising 361 signs, each of which stands for 400 (tzontli is ‘hair’ and ‘400’) but it adds to this two incense bags (xiquimilli), each standing for the number 8,000: so the total is 20,000. The sources give different numbers of men sacrificed at that occa- sion. Friar Diego Durán, for example, speaks of 80,400 victims. Such mass killings, of course, do occur worldwide in war circumstances. And the numbers of casualties in ancient wars are even somewhat small in comparison with the enormous massacres and massive scale of destruction in modern wars. In the expanding Aztec empire wars of conquest must have occurred frequently; still the mass killing of local populations is not something one would expect from an empire based on tributes of goods and services: the impact of massacres on local economy and the capacity for paying tribute would have been disastrous. When one thinks of the sheer technology or practicality of sacrifice that would have been involved, the conclusion is that it would take quite a large number of days and of sacrificing priests to kill such enormous quantities of people. The psychological effect on the audience would be numbing and stu- pefying. Both the Spanish authors, hostile towards the indigenous religion, and some old Aztec warriors, boasting about their success in war, may have had reason to exaggerate the numbers. One might therefore question the precision and objectivity of those registers – especially as they were based on hearsay (the event having occurred more than thirty years before the conquest and several decades more before those sources were written). The lack of linguistic knowledge, particularly concerning the special expressions that refer to ritual events and religious con- cepts, may further have caused inadequate comprehension on the side of the – already biased – Spanish authors. Another point of historical critique would be that the image in Codex Telleriano- Remensis is not explicit in dealing with the sacrifice itself. With the number there are four men depicted as indicators of the peoples involved: they were Mazatecs (identified by a deer: mazatl), the people of Xiuhcoac (‘Place of the Turquoise Serpent’), Tlapanecs (from Tlapa, ‘Red Place’) and Zapotecs (identified by a zapote tree). These were specifically attired – with white down balls on the head and the vertical black band through the eye – and they hold a white banner. These are indeed signs associated with sacrificial victims, but an explicit representation of the sacrifice itself is lacking. In view of the different considerations listed above, one wonders, therefore, whether the sacrifice described in the Spanish text is really what happened. The pictorial scene in Codex Telleriano-Remensis could easily be read as the symbolic large quantity of 20,000 men marching through Mexico-Tenochtitlan attired as victims, and so in an embodied, physical manner demonstrating Maarten Jansen and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez - 9789004340527 Downloaded from Brill.com10/11/2021 08:49:41AM via free access <UN> 362 chapter 6 their subjugation and pledging their obedience to the Aztec gods, the Aztec people and the Aztec rulers. This sounds like quite a normal thing to do in a ritual context. That alternative possibility would explain the numbers without implying a mass killing. It is more logical (and in accordance with the type of direct confrontation and champion warfare) to suppose that enemy leaders were ritually executed, but that their peoples were made into vassals of the new administration.
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