Interpreting Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural (Teotihuacan, Mexico)

INTERPRETING TEPANTITLA PATIO 2

MURAL (TEOTIHUACAN, MEXICO)

AS AN ANCESTRAL FIGURE

______

A Thesis

Presented

to the Faculty of

California State University, Chico

______

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

Art History

______

Fall 2018

INTERPRETING TEPANTITLA PATIO 2

MURAL (TEOTIHUACAN, MEXICO)

AS AN ANCESTRAL FIGURE

A Thesis

Atalie Tate Halpin

APPROVED BY THE INTERIM DEAN OF GRADUATE STUDIES:

______Sharon Barrios, PhD.

APPROVED THE GRADUATE ADVISORY COMMITTEE:

______Asa S. Mittman, PhD., Chair Matthew G. Looper, PhD. Graduate Coordinator

______Rachel Middleman, PhD.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………….. iv

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………… 1

II. Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural: Context and Description ...... 4

III. Previous Interpretations: Literature Review …………………………………………… 14

A. “Tlaloc”……………………………………………………………………………... 14 B. “Great Goddess” …………………………………………………………………… 15 C. “Spider Woman” …………………………………………………………………… 18 D. “Water Goddess” and Other Interpretations ……………………………………….. 19

IV. Methods ………………………………………………………………………………... 24

A. Iconography ………………………………………………………………………... 24 B. Cross-cultural and Trans-historical Comparisons …………………………………. 25

V. Iconographic Analysis …………………………………………………………………… 29

A. World Trees and the Cosmic Center ……………………………………………….. 29 B. Agricultural, Aquatic, and Floral Motifs ………………………………………….... 30 C. Headdress and Garments …………………………………………………………… 31 D. Fanged Nose Plaque ………………………………………………………………... 32 E. Comparison to Theatre-type Censers and Censer Rituals ………………………….. 34

VI. Comparison to Ancestral Representations in Mesoamerican Art ……………………… 41

VII. Domains of Ancestors in Mesoamerican Worldview …………………………………. 51

VIII. Discussion and Conclusions …………………………………………………………. 61

A. Gender ……………………………………………………………………………… 61 B. Political power ……………………………………………………………………… 64 C. Teotihuacan Worldview ……………………………………………………………. 66

Figures ……………………………………………………………………………………… 69 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………... 88

iii

ABSTRACT

INTERPRETING TEPANTITLA PATIO 2

MURAL (TEOTIHUACAN, MEXICO)

AS AN ANCESTRAL FIGURE

Master of Arts in Art History

California State University, Chico

Fall 2018

This thesis examines previous interpretations of Tepantitla Patio 2, Mural 2, in

Teotihuacan, Mexico, and proposes an ancestral interpretation for the central figure. Examining iconographical themes within Teotihuacan’s residential art, and considering the archaological evidence of the use of the patio and the apartment complexes of Teotihuacan in general, this study focuses on the ancestor cults that permiated the doestic spheres of the city, rather than attempting to categorize the mural’s central figure as a deity of the state’s central religion. The iconographical significance of the frontal tableau, including a legless, frontally facing central figure with a large fanged noseplaque and avian hairdress flanked by two attending figures, and the axial configuration of a cave, mountain, and tree assemblage within a composition rich in water and agricultural symbolism, is considered and compared within the art of Teotihuacan. To further analyze the significance of ancestors across Mesoamerica and their associated realms and methods of artistic representation, cross-cultural and trans-historical studies are presented.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This study focuses on the central figure in the upper register of the fresco mural (Figure

1) located in Patio 2 of the Tepantitla apartment complex, Teotihuacan, and considers its potential identification as an ancestral representation. Located in the patio of an elite residence, this mural features two figures in profile approaching a prominent frontally facing figure with outstretched arms, diamond eyes, a mysterious face hidden behind a fanged nose bar, a giant avian headdress, and tree branches rich in symbolism extending upward on a central axis. The base of the figure merges into a horizon of wave motifs, and features a cave-like opening. While most contemporary scholars identify this figure as a deity, I argue for its interpretation as an ancestor figure. Using iconographic analysis and comparison to other objects associated with

Teotihuacan’s ancestor veneration, I examine this piece not only in the context of city of

Teotihuacan, but also in the archaeological context of Teotihuacan’s residential districts and use of the patio itself. The presentation of incense by the flanking figures towards a figure visually resembling Teotihuacan incense-burning censers, and the ceremonial importance of these vessels in the context of ancestral veneration, support my interpretation within this thesis. The likeness of the tree branches to Mesoamerican “world tree” ideology which is supported by other cases of cave-mountain-tree configurations, the gendered symbolism of spiders and butterflies in

Mesoamerican traditions, and the gender-ambiguous features of the central figure all lend themselves to an ancestral interpretation. Cave emergence, and tree origin stories from surrounding cultural records will be analyzed in relationship to these elements presented in the

Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural.

Located in the Valley of Mexico, 45 kilometers north of today’s Mexico City, the city of

Teotihuacan achieved its peak around 500-600 CE.1 The largest city in the Americas at its height, it reached a population of approximately 125,000.2 Certainly identifiable as a state by

200 CE, Teotihuacan was a strong polity even centuries before that.3 Beginning in 150 CE and through the Classic period (300-900 CE), it was the main urban center of central Mexico.4 The city was built on a north-south axis, aligned along the Street of the Dead (Figure 2). The great

Pyramid of the Sun flanks the Street of the Dead on its east side, while the Pyramid of the Moon overlooks the rest of the city from the north. The Temple of the Feathered Serpent with its elaborate mosaic facade lies in the Ciudadela, located off of the Street of the Dead in the southwest of the city’s heart.5 Scholars divide the Teotihuacan metropolis into four probable districts, reflecting concepts of the Mesoamerican quadripartite cosmogram.6 Structured in a grid, the city boasts great works of public political architecture as well as residential complexes to house its citizens. Not surprisingly, there are numerous differences in the nature of the art and artefacts from these two distinct spaces of public and domestic life and ritual practice.

The art of the apartment complexes (or barrios) at Teotihuacan is characterized by vividly pigmented fresco murals, ceramic incense burners, and modestly sized figurines. Such domestic art and ritual objects contrast with the monumental sculptures, facades, and large caches of obsidian and jade artefacts from the major religious and political structures of the city.

Teotihuacan’s ceramic incense burners and stone masks that share visual, iconographic, and

1 George L. Cowgill, Ancient Teotihuacan: Early Urbanism in Central Mexico. Case Studies in Early Societies 2 René Millon, “The Last Years of Teotihuacan Dominance,” in The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations, ed. Norman Yoffee and George L. Cowgill (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988), 102. 3 Cowgill, Ancient Teotihuacan, 10. 4 Linda R. Manzanilla, “Teotihuacan Apartment Compounds, Neighborhood Centers, and Palace Structures,” in Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, ed. Matthew H. Robb, Rubén Cabrera Castro, and David M. Carballo (San Francisco, CA: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 2017), 94. 5 Cowgill, Ancient Teotihuacan, 36. 6 Manzanilla, “Teotihuacan Apartment Compounds,” 94.

contextual similarities with the Tepantitla mural likely had ceremonial functions.7 A composite assemblage of many mold-made pieces called adornos, the base of the so-called theatre-type censer incense burners (Figures 3, 4, and 5) are often mound-shaped with an attached mask, jewelry, and elaborate headdress. The choice of adornos allowed for multiple combinations and arrangements, enabling personalization by the diverse persons who likely used them.8

Visually and compositionally similar to the presentation of mummy bundles or otherwise prepared corpses throughout ancient Mesoamerica, the function of ceramic censers as instruments in rituals for the dead is probable.9 Not a localized phenomenon, Teotihuacan-style censers experienced popularity in Guatemala as well, in areas likely inhabited by people originally from Teotihuacan.10 The nature and function of these ceramic censers as paraphernalia for ancestor veneration are central to my thesis. Comparing the central figure in the Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural to censers and ritual objects for ancestral veneration was one of the initial elements that prompted this study.

7 Margaret Young-Sanchez, “Veneration of the Dead: Religious Ritual on a Pre-Columbian Mirror-Back,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 77, no. 9 (1990): 328. 8 Young-Sanchez, 335. 9 Young-Sanchez, 328. 10 Janet Catherine Berlo, “Teotihuacan Art Abroad: A Study of Metropolitan Style and Provincial Transformation in Incensario Workshops,” Ph.D. diss. (New Haven: Yale University, 1980), 328-29.

CHAPTER II

TEPANTITLA PATIO 2 MURAL: CONTEXT AND DESCRIPTION

Although Teotihuacan has been hailed as “perhaps the least lost prehistoric city in the world,” areas of the city less monumental than the major structures such as the Pyramid of the

Sun, including many of the residential complexes, were neglected until as recently as the 1950s and beyond.11 Alfonso Caso discovered the elaborate murals of the Tepantitla complex (Figure

6) in 1933, and published a report of this findings nearly a decade later.12 The Tepantitla barrio or residential complex (Figure 7) is located just northwest of the great Sun Pyramid.13 Most of

Teotihuacan’s apartments were constructed between 200-650 CE, and scholars date the creation of the Tepantitla murals to circa 400-700 CE.14 Caso’s initial report described the murals and offered an interpretation heavily reliant on the assumption that the central figure of the upper mural represented Teotihuacan’s version of the Aztec storm god Tlaloc. Archaeologists have since provided new data that help us to contextualize Teotihuacan’s apartment complexes in relation to the lives of individuals inhabiting them and their treatment of the dead.

Teotihuacan’s multi-apartment residential complexes housed most of the city’s population. These residences were inhabited by the lesser elites of the city, as well as the common folk.15 A typical compound at Teotihuacan usually contained several rooms on slightly different levels situated around open spaces and courtyards, like the patio at Tepantitla.16 These

11 Cowgill, Ancient Teotihuacan, 41. 12 Alfonso Caso, “El paraíso terrenal en teotihuacán,” Cuadernos Americanos 6 (1942): 127–36. 13 Annabeth Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity: The Sociopolitical Structure of an Ancient Mesoamerican City (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 3. 14 Young-Sanchez, 337. 15 Cowgill, Ancient Teotihuacan, 269. 16 Linda Manzanilla, “Corporate Groups and Domestic Activities at Teotihuacan,” Latin American Antiquity 7, no. 3 (1996): 233.

square courtyards typically featured a small altar or shrine in their center.17 Residences of “ritual families” were housed around these central courtyards; these households were shared by extended family. Nuclear families resided in the houses, which included up to around twenty- five square meters of roofed space.18 Teotihuacan’s apartment complexes were built using combinations of mud brick, stone rubble, tepetate (compacted and cemented soil found in volcanic regions of Mexico), set with mud mortar, and faced with Teotihuacan-style concrete and then plaster. Wealthier homes had polychrome fresco paintings in their plaster walls.19 The elaborateness of the mural of Tepantitla’s Patio 2, together with its close proximity to the

Pyramid of the Sun, suggest its importance as an upper-class residence, but not a royal one.20

Ancestors served as a unifying force in group identity within the barrios, or apartment complexes, of Teotihuacan’s residents.21 The occupants of the apartment compounds likely consisted of a core of people who considered themselves related, descended from a common ancestor or ancestors.22 Biometric data from the residences at Teotihuacan show that the male inhabitants were more closely related in these compounds than females.23 It is likely that fellow occupants came together for rituals involving coming of age, marriage, death, and childbirth.

Maintaining communication with deceased members of the apartment communities was important in all of these contexts.24 The importance of keeping the ancestors close to the living is exemplified quite literally within the practice of burying the dead in the floors of these

17 Cowgill, Ancient Teotihuacan, 270. 18 Manzanilla, “Teotihuacan Apartment Compounds,” 96. 19 Cowgill, Ancient Teotihuacan, 270. 20 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 3. 21 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 45. 22 Cowgill, Ancient Teotihuacan, 276. 23 Michael W. Spence, “Residential Practices and the Distribution of Skeletal Traits in Teotihuacan, Mexico,” Man 9, no. 2 (1974): 262-73. 24 Cowgill, Ancient Teotihuacan, 276.

compounds. Residential compounds were likely not closely monitored by the state, given the diversity of burial practices found within them.25

Two burials were found under the floor of the main patio at the Tepantitla compound, though their age and sex were not specified at the time of publication.26 These bodies were buried after the floor was constructed, as the floor was repaired over the burial.27 A Teotihuacan apartment compound frequently contained an important burial on its earliest level of construction, often attributed to a founding ancestor.28 Martha Sempowski’s 1992 study found a correlation between high-status burials and the earliest phases of construction in Teotihuacan residential complexes.29 The ancestor or founder literally (and probably figuratively) became the foundation on which the compound was built. Not only did Teotihuacanos practice the establishing of these initial “founding” burials at the first levels of constructions, occupants too were sometimes buried beneath the floors of their own apartments.30 Teotihuacanos often interred their dead in a north-south orientation and a squatting position.31 The ceramic incense- burning censers that I discuss are associated with the offerings for these domestic burials.32

Much of the Teotihuacan’s art originates from the apartment compounds, including the fresco paintings that adorned the walls of porticos, pottery figurines, Teotihuacan’s famous stone

25 Sarah C. Clayton, “Gender and Mortuary Ritual at Ancient Teotihuacan, Mexico: A Study of Intrasocietal Diversity,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 31, no. 1 (2011):31-52. 26 Martha L. Sempowski and Michael W. Spence, Mortuary Practices and Skeletal Remains at Teotihuacan, (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 238-39. 27 Sempowski and Spence, Mortuary Practices, 238-39. 28 Esther Pasztory, “A Reinterpretation of Teotihuacan and Its Mural Painting Tradition,” in Feathered Serpents and Flowering Trees: Reconstructing the Murals of Teotihuacan, ed. Kathleen Berrin (San Francisco: The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1988), 59. 29 Martha Sempowski, “Economic and Social Implications of Variations in Mortuary Practices at Teotihuacan,” in Art Ideology, and the City of Teotihuacan, ed. Janet Catherine Berlo (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 1992), 27-58. 30 Young-Sanchez, 337. 31 Sigvald Linne, Mexican Highland Cultures: Archaeological Researches at Teotihuacan, Calpulalpan and Chalchicomula in 1934/35,. Publication no. 7 (Stockholm: Ethnographical Museum of Sweden, 1942), 124-25. 32 Young-Sanchez, 337.

masks, and incense burners that were likely used in conjunction with domestic rituals and ceremonies.33

The domestic and private nature of this patio fresco mural imply an intended personal and intimate relationship between viewer and painted figures. Not a public religious space, its contents should not be viewed as such. Considered within the context of domestic burials, offerings served as the means of communication with ancestors. These burials confirm the

Tepantitla patio as a space of ancestors. The domestic location limited the number of viewers.34

A public mural would imply state-sponsorship for display; however, in Teotihuacan, where people lived in apartment complexes with kin, the depiction of an ancestor benefits the inhabitants as a past leader to look up to, a liaison for prayer, and a source of blessings of abundance and fertility.

Constructed as a domestically viewed mural in an the Tepantitla apartment complex, the

Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural was likely viewed by a group of people sharing familial relationships and common ancestors.35 Caso’s initial 1942 report describes the spatial layout of the apartment’s patio murals.36 Each wall of the patio enclosure featured fresco murals, however, only one mural’s upper portion survived. This noteworthy upper-wall mural has been designated as Mural 2 (Figure 8), and is the focus of my thesis. The subject matter of Tepantitla Mural 3

(Figure 9) has often been incorporated into interpretations of Mural 2, as it occupies the wall space just below Mural 2. Like the Patio 2 mural, murals 3 and 5 in the same patio complex also feature images of tilled agricultural fields and produce. Mural 3 includes a large central

33 Young-Sanchez, 328. 34 Matthew H. Robb, “The Water Goddess,” in Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, ed. Matthew H. Robb, Rubén Cabrera Castro, and David M. Carballo (San Francisco, CA: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 2017), 161. 35 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 45. 36 Caso, “El paraíso terrenal en Teotihuacán,” 127–36.

mountain and small human figures in active poses. Plants are prominent subjects of Mural 5, as are hills in Mural 4.

Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural depicts a large, frontally facing figure with two attendants facing inward, scattering incense from their bags. The frontally facing central figure (Figure 9) wears a large feathered headdress featuring a bird’s face, a fanged nose bar, large earplugs, and a richly decorated quechquemitl (a shawl-like garment worn by women in Mesoamerica). The bottom garment of the central figure merges with an arched opening, which has been likened to a cave or similar opening in the earth. Two distinct tree branches extend upward from behind the figure and branch outward, one featuring spiders on its branches, the other containing butterflies. A medial band topped with tilled soil and agricultural plants separates Mural 2 from the mural beneath it (Mural 3). Mural 3 features a large central mountain, above which very small figures play a game in a ball-court. Small figures inhabit the space of this lower mural, the actions of which have warranted a variety of different explanations by scholars.

The detail, complexity, and multiplicity of figures presented in these murals almost overwhelms the eye. Although the Mural at Tepantitla includes two distinct registers, and upper and a lower divided by a medial band, I focus this thesis mainly on the upper register (Mural 2).

While connections between the two spaces are relevant to the interpretation of the upper composition, to tackle the complexities of the lower space, with its multiplicity of figures engaged in ritual scenes, would require a second, book-length study. I will briefly discuss both murals’ imagery and in their thematic and compositional relationship to each other. The schemes of these two mural registers share a very similar structure. Most notably, the mountain shown in the center of the lower register aligns vertically with the central figure in the upper register, matching it in size and prominence. Though similar in this way, the groupings and sizes

of the secondary figures in the two registers differ. The top register, Mural 2, contains three substantially sized individuals standing on a single groundline, while Mural 3’s myriad of smaller figures are dispersed and grouped in various ways throughout the composition. The tree branches and the central figure of the upper mural, along with the mountain in the lower mural, both sit along a vertical axis in the center of the wall. This axial orientation should be noted, as it has been a key factor in the interpretation of these elements forming an axis mundi and a “world tree.”

The current state of Mural 2 should be noted first and foremost before discussing in depth its formal qualities. When comparing the two murals, the state of preservation of the lower mural

(Figure 9) far surpasses that of the upper image (Figure 8). Reconstructions by archaeologists

(Figure 1) help fill in spaces for the mind’s eye, by connecting the branches of the great tree in the upper register, and filling in most of the profile figure on the left. Reconstructions of the formerly left figure in the mural draw heavily on mirroring the well-preserved image of the figure on the right hand side. Artists responsible for the reconstruction essentially relied on the overall (but not exact) symmetry of the mural’s composition to fill in missing areas.

Unfortunately, much of what we would consider the background of the top scene has been lost.

While small active human figures swarm the field of the lower scene, we will never know if such minor figures existed in the background of the upper portion, as those areas of the mural are completely lost.

Typical of the Teotihuacan mural painting tradition, the style of Mural 2 uses outline, flat fill cover, and a highly rigid stylized form when depicting people, flora, fauna, and symbolic elements. Many scholars have attributed this widespread style and de-emphasis on the individual

as a collective pursuit of unity and cosmic balance at Teotihuacan.37 “At their core,” considers

Matthew H. Robb, “many interpretations of the art of Teotihuacan proceed from an assumption that there is a fundamental and largely parallel alignment between an art system and a political system.”38 The uniform appearance of the murals throughout different neighborhood complexes may speak to unifying goals of the city or a strong central government responsible for training or sponsoring the city’s artists. Like all frescoes, the pigments, although still very vibrant and bright considering their age, take on a slight pastel quality, especially when viewed in indirect sunlight. The main colors used in the Tepantitla patio murals include a deep burgundy red which was used mostly for the background, a faded reddish pink color, a soft golden yellow, a faded blue, and a minty colored light green.

The schematized human body is presented with slightly larger heads and shorter bodies than real-life scale. Individuality is generally not expressed through the facial features of

Teotihuacan depictions of people; the faces appear somewhat standardized.39 Artists expressed the identity, gender, and status of their subjects through depictions of complicated dress and regalia.40 This attention to detail presents itself through the treatment of the garments, headdresses, footwear, and other bodily adornments. The large scale of headdresses and overwhelming size of fringes, tassels, and jewelry stress the importance of these elements. The height of the feathered headdresses worn by the flanking profile figures in Mural 2 are nearly the same as the human figures themselves!

37 David M. Carballo and Matthew H. Robb, “Lighting the World: Teotihuacan Urbanism in Central Mexico,” in Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, ed. Matthew H. Robb, Rubén Cabrera Castro, and David M. Carballo (San Francisco, CA: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 2017), 17. 38 Matthew H. Robb, “Space, Object, and Identity in the City of the Gods,” in Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, ed. Matthew H. Robb, Rubén Cabrera Castro, and David M. Carballo (San Francisco, CA: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 2017), 158. 39 Carballo and Robb, “Lighting the World,” 14. 40 George L. Cowgill, “State and Society at Teotihuacan, Mexico.” Annual Review of Anthropology 26, no. 1 (1997): 149.

Looking closely at the iconography of the central figure (Figure 9), identity and place are expressed through the schematized garments, headdress, nosepiece, tree elements, and bodily presentation. A large fanged nosepiece obscures the lower half of the central figure’s face. The wide-eyed, front-facing bird head dominating the central figure’s massive headdress may first catch the viewer’s eye as the face of the entity. Diamond shapes outline the eyes of the central figure, with vertical stripes implying face paint or even fringe from the headdress. The figure’s arms extend outward, and droplets of liquid spout from the hands. Two thick tree trunks emerge from behind the feathered plumes of the headdress. Both are outlined in a light green color, one trunk colored pink and the other yellow. The pink trunk crosses over the yellow one just above the feathered plumes, and then again they intertwine and branch out to fill the top central space of the composition. One tree features butterflies along its base and branches, and the other features spiders. Small leaves border the edges of each branch, which terminate in a large blossom from which sprout ribbon-like plumes and teardrop-shaped tassels, which possibly represent water or rain.

Beneath the tree’s branches, two figures stand in profile facing the central figure. Were we to remove the headdresses, these flanking figures would stand just about the same height as the central figure, however, they appear much shorter due to their much smaller (but still impressive) feathered headdresses. The flanking figures scatter incense from their bags towards the central figure. Unlike the central figure whose feet are concealed beneath a long skirt and schematic wave patterns, the flanking figure who survives more completely wears a shorter garment which exposes the lower legs and sandals. In the reconstructed image, this figure is simply repeated in mirror image in the place where most of the other figure is lost.

The appearance of the flanking figures in the reconstruction should be considered, as many scholars work from this image, rather than the original. Each wears both a top and bottom garment with green fringe that matches the green feathers in their headdresses. These headdresses also contain the face of a bird, connecting them to the main figure. Scrolls suggesting life-force or smoke rise from the hands as scattering offerings, while the opposite hand holds a bag. Neither figure wears a nose bar, but both wear ear spools and beaded bracelets similar to the jewelry worn by the central figure. A mask-like application of face paint covers the upper portion of the attending figure’s faces. Behind these figures sprout plants, slightly shorter than the height of the figures, and a bird sits atop each. These birds too face inward, directing the eye back to the main group. They, along with the other birds in the treetops, emit sound or

“speech” scrolls, indicating the addition of birdsongs to the multisensory aspect of the scene.

The three figures stand on a bottom border consisting of large wave motifs. These waves alternate in color and pattern. From these wave-like segments, fruiting plants sprout up, though not much of their forms remain intact on the original mural. The borders of the mural are nearly as complex and interesting as the center scene they frame. They consist of swirling wave patterns, undulating ribbons and borders with emerging anthropomorphic goggled beings, and feature sequences and patterns of various star and water symbols.

The central figure of the upper register, perhaps the originator of these trees, sports massive circular earplugs or disks. The cascading, swirling, and complex designs of the garments worn by this figure obliterate any physical cues to an intended “biological” sex.41 The upper garment resembles a quechquemitl, the shoulder capelet worn by women in ancient central

41 Cowgill, "State and Society at Teotihuacan, Mexico," 149.

and southern Mexico, as seen in artistic renderings of women in Mesoamerica and specifically at

Teotihuacan.42 Beneath the quechquemitl women generally are presented wearing long skirts.

The feet of the central figure are obscured by the tiered layers of what appear to be a skirt but may in fact represent much more than a garment. Due to the repetitive star motifs, swirling edges, and agricultural elements that adorn the garment, it is difficult to say where the skirt ends and the bottom border of large waves begins. This part of the figure has been described as having female qualities, “ . . . as water gushes forth from a womb-like vaginal opening.”43 In the center of the lower half of the skirt, an arched element with double bands opens up to reveal a space of floating maize kernels beneath. Comparing this bottom element of this figure with

Mesoamerican cave iconography has led me to discuss the relationship between caves and ancestral emergence in art and origin stories throughout Mesoamerica. Seven teardrop-shaped tassels extend from the scalloped lower edge beneath the kernels. The central figure’s outstretched arms stack beaded bracelets, and open palms emit four distinct streams of teardrop shaped elements like water.

42 Sergio Gomez-Chavez, “The Underworld at Teotihuacan,” in Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, ed. Matthew H. Robb, Rubén Cabrera Castro, and David M. Carballo (San Francisco, CA: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 2017), 54. 43 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 15-16.

CHAPTER III

PREVIOUS INTERPRETATIONS: LITERATURE REVIEW

A. “Tlaloc”

The first publication describing Mural 2, published in 1942, entitled this fresco the

“Tlalocan Mural.” Alfonso Caso, who discovered the Tepantitla murals in 1933, interpreted the murals through the lens of Aztec tradition, identifying the central figure of Mural 2 as the Storm

God, using the Aztec name Tlaloc for this entity.44 Elements supporting this attribution included the fanged frontal faces in the border, the fanged piece covering the mouth of the central figure

(the Aztec Tlaloc is depicted with a similar though not identical fanged mouth), along with the water symbolism presented throughout. This interpretation relied heavily on the idea that the lower register depicted Tlalocan, the Aztec afterlife for individuals who lost their lives in water- related accidents like drowning.45 This initial association with the better-known Aztec deity was understandable for its time, as Teotihuacan studies were much less established until later in the

1940s.46 This initial interpretation has fallen out of favor for the most part, as Teotihuacan studies and the comparative investigation of Mesoamerican iconography have progressed since the mural’s initial discovery.

44 Alfonso Caso, “El Paraíso Terrenal en Teotihuacán,” 128. 45 Christophe Helmke and Jesper Nielsen, "Of Gods and Rituals: The Religion of Teotihuacan," in Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, ed. Matthew H. Robb, Rubén Cabrera Castro, and David M. Carballo (San Francisco, CA: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 2017), 138. 46 Esther Pasztory, The Iconography of the Teotihuacan Tlaloc. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology 15 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 1974), 3-5.

B. “Great Goddess”

In 1962, George Kubler was the first to identify the central Tepantitla figure as a feminine entity and not the Aztec deity Tlaloc.47 As early as 1881, scholars like Jesus Sánchez theorized a water goddess as a central Teotihuacan deity.48 Seen as a deity with multiple aspects, this being was thought to have served as the preeminent deity of Teotihuacan after 200 CE.49

For more than a century, scholars have tended to agree with the idea of a prominent goddess in

Teotihuacan; for example, in 1997, George L. Cowgill cited Janet Catherine Berlo, Clara Millon,

Von Winning, and Karl Taube as supporting the “Great Goddess” theory during the middle to late twentieth century.50 According to Esther Pasztory, who also challenged the “Tlaloc” interpretation of the Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural in 1974, several characteristics seen in many different mural paintings (including the one at Tepantitla) were viewed as diagnostic of the so- called “Great Goddess.”51 One of these is the fanged nose bar, seen clearly in the mural at

Tepantitla. A horizontal nose plaque with four downward extending “fangs” and the large feathered headdress with bird(s) are the two main features Pasztory used to identify figures as the

“Great Goddess” of Teotihuacan.

Most notably in the Tepantitla Mural, two flanking figures are shown in profile while the central one is shown frontally, with outstretched arms. Zella Nuttall was perhaps the first scholar to approach the concept of frontality in Mesoamerican art, theorizing in 1901 that a front-facing head and outstretched body represented a cosmology for a kingdom, with the head of state

47 George Kubler, The Art And Architecture of Ancient America, 1st edition. (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1962), 37. 48 Jesus Sánchez, “Estatua Colosal de la Diosa del Agua.” Anales del Museo Nacional de México 1, no. 3 (1886):27- 30. 49 Eduardo Matos Montezuma, Teotihuacan: The City of Gods. (New York: Rizzoli, 1990), 179. 50 Cowgill, “State And Society At Teotihuacan, Mexico,” 149. 51 Pasztory, The Iconography of the Teotihuacan Tlaloc, 9-11.

symbolized in the head and the four limbs extending out as the land’s four corners.52 In 1965, the issue of frontality in Mesoamerican art became the subject of Columbia University student

John F. Scott, who claimed the “iconography limits the fully symmetrical frontal pose to gods.”53

Shortly thereafter, in 1967, George Kubler wrote that Teotihuacan’s frontal figures had more rank than profile figures in painted and incised compositions, theorizing that the majority of

Teotihuacan frontal figures represented “cult images or supernatural beings.”54 In compositions with a frontal figure flanked by figures in profile, Kubler hypothesized that the profile figures represented human priests, celebrants, or impersonators.55 These statements on frontality in

Mesoamerican art and their theoretical association with deities have no doubt influenced the interpretation of the frontality presented in Tepantitla.

Cecelia F. Klein, who eventually became a prominent Mesoamericanist art historian, wrote her entire dissertation on the topic of frontality in Postclassic Mesoamerican two- dimensional art in 1972. Published as a book in 1976, Klein concluded that the “spatial and temporal contexts of frontal imagery, moreover, frequently correspond to the associations of its subject matter in cosmological space and time.”56 In the examples discussed, Klein noted that figures shown frontally who are shown elsewhere in profile, referenced and end or a beginning of a “spatio-temporal cycle” or a reference to a “great female earth monster whose consistently frontal form represents that part of of the cosmos wherein lay the end/beginning points of all

52 Zelia Nuttall, “The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations,” Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 2 (1901):173-74. 53 John F. Scott, “Figural Posture in Early Mesoamerican Relief,” Unpublished M.A. thesis. Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York (1965), 11, 73. 54 George Kubler, The Iconography of the Art of Teotihuacan (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 1967), 7. 55 Kubler, The Iconography of the Art of Teotihuacan, 7. 56 Cecelia F. Klein, The Face of the Earth: Frontality in Two-Dimensional Mesoamerican Art (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1976), 258.

cycles.”57 While Klein’s work has proved influential in the study and interpretation of

Teotihuacan frontal images, it is important to note that her hypothesis was conceived primarily with reference to Aztec artistic formats. The time period studied in Klein’s dissertation ranges from 950-1521, possibly 500 or more years after the Tepantitla murals were created. When comparing profile and frontal depictions of deities cross-culturally, it is important to remember that cultures like Maya and Mixtec regularly presented their deities in profile form and their rulers in frontal configuration; that is, there is no direct correlation of frontality with divine status.

The “Great Goddess” theory is not without critics. Art historian Elisa Mandell published an extensive study on the gender of the “Great Goddess” of Teotihuacan in 2015. Her work identified inconsistencies in different images and figures that scholars have designated as the

“Great Goddess.”58 “When using iconography to identify a deity, consistency is crucial,” wrote

Mandell, “yet images that have been identified as the Goddess are inconsistent in their appearance….”59 Mandell’s criticism pointed out the differences in headdresses, nose bars, eye shape, garments, and iconography found across the body of figures commonly interpreted as aspects of the “Great Goddess;” she concluded by joining other scholars including Taube and

Cowgill in rejecting the existence of a “mega-Goddess” cult at Teotihuacan.60

57 Klein, 259. 58 Elisa Mandell, “A New Analysis of the Gender Attribution of the ‘Great Goddess’ of Teotihuacan.” Ancient Mesoamerica 26, no. 1 (2015): 35-38. 59 Mandell, 35. 60 Cowgill, “State and Society At Teotihuacan, Mexico,” 150; Mandell, 45; Karl A. Taube, “Teotihuacan Religion and Deities,” in Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia, ed. Susan Toby Evans and David L. Webster (New York: Garland, 2001), 733.

C. “Spider Woman”

Karl Taube also identified the Tepantitla figure as female deity, describing characteristics of the entity within Teotihuacan imagery: “Aside from her gender, major features are a frame headdress with a bird medallion in the center, a curious nose bar with pendant elements suggestive of fangs, and, frequently, yellow body coloration.”61 Taube’s goddess interpretation for this figure differed from others, as in 1983 he argued for a “Spider Woman” goddess within the Teotihuacan pantheon. Besides the obvious imagery of spiders in the Tepantitla Mural tree and their understood association with weaving in Mesoamerica, Taube suggested that the distinctly fanged nose bar is indicative of a spider’s mouth.62 Relying heavily on the “Spider

Grandmother” mythology of the recent American Southwest Pueblo and Navajo traditions,

Taube theorized that the central figure was Teotihuacan’s version of the same entity, as well as the weaver/earth goddess aspect of the Aztec goddess Toci.63 Taube interpreted several aspects relating to creation and emergence in the mural: the “opening” at the base of the central figure as a cave of emergence, the tree branches featuring gender symbolism embodied in spiders and butterflies, and the feature beneath it as a mirror used for scrying.64 Elements like the owl in the figure’s headdress indicated a role as messenger between the underworld and the land of the living.65 Although I find the “Spider Woman” interpretation based on the American Southwest

Spider Grandmother lore a bit of a stretch, Taube’s argument for an entity with both creation/emergence/dual gender role symbolism along with connections to the underworld actually support, rather than conflict with, my ancestral reading.

61 Karl A. Taube, “The Teotihuacan Spider Woman,” Journal of Latin American Lore 9 no. 2 (1983):108. 62 Taube, “The Teotihuacan Spider Woman,” 109. 63 Taube, “The Teotihuacan Spider Woman,” 126-29. 64 Taube, “The Teotihuacan Spider Woman,” 118. 65 Taube, “The Teotihuacan Spider Woman,” 111.

D. “Water Goddess” and Other Interpretations

Matthew Robb pointed out visual similarities between the notched peak visible in the ridgeline of Cerro Gordo and the notch in the top of another female stone figure’s headpiece, which he identified as both a “Water Goddess,” and the same entity presented at Tepantitla.66

Cerro Gordo, a mountain visible to the north of Teotihuacan, was known as “Tenan” in Nahuatl during colonial times, which translates to “Mother of Stone.”67 The compositional importance given to the central figure in the upper register of the mural at Tepantitla (Mural 2) is similarly duplicated and in the size, shape, and location of the large mountain figure in the same mural’s lower register (Mural 3).68 The similarities in the relationships between Cerro Gordo and the central figure in the upper mural of Tepantitla to the mountain in the lower panel relate to the cosmology of mountains and ancestors which support my interpretation.

Scholarship (including Robb’s) that appeared in the Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of

Fire 2017 catalogue published by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco identified the

Tepantitla figure and others as manifestations of a state water goddess. This interpretation focused on the “Water Goddess” role in the so-called Teotihuacan pantheon.69 When addressing the subject of ancestral veneration at Teotihuacan, in contrast to state sponsored religion,

Headrick proposed that the ancestor worship practiced in the domestic spheres of Teotihuacan constituted a potential check of or even a threat to state power.70 Headrick’s proposal that domestic art lay outside the central control of the government is important to my theory that the

66 Robb, “The Water Goddess,” 156. The reference here is to a monolith identified as a water goddess: Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Mexico City, 10-1163. 67 Francisco de Castaneda, Official Reports on the Towns of Tequizistlan, Tepechpan, Acolman, and San Juan Teotihuacan Sent by Francisco de Castaneda to His Majesty, Philip II and the Council of the Indies in 1580, trans. Zelia Nuttall (Cambridge: Peabody Museum and Harvard University, 1926). 68 Robb, “The Water Goddess,” 156. 69 Helmke and Nielsen, “Of Gods and Rituals,” 135. 70 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 44.

central figure in Mural 2 is an ancestral figure and not identified as a deity promoted by the

Teotihuacan state.

As stated previously, not all scholars have agreed on the interpretation of this figure as a

“Great Goddess”, “Water Goddess,” or even a goddess at all! Here I discuss interpretations concerned with the cosmological significance of Tepantitla figure. Writing in 2007, Annabeth

Headrick questioned the validity of a widely encompassing “Great Goddess” entity at

Teotihuacan; when discussing Tepantitla’s Mural 2 she instead referred to the central figure as a personified mountain.71 Headrick interpreted the mural scene as human figures presenting precious offerings to the personified mountain, who reciprocated the offerings with the water pouring from its hands.72 Previously, in 2002, Headrick suggested that the central figure in the

Tepantitla mural represented a stone sculpture with tree branches affixed for the performance of a “tree raising” ceremony--a practice of the Aztec.73 Headrick did, however, also write extensively about the importance of ancestral veneration practices in the domestic complexes of

Teotihuacan, specifically in the patios.74 Her research has helped immensely in understanding the complex relationships between the dead and the living at Teotihuacan. Headrick’s application of the Mesoamerican world tree, or axis mundi, concept to the tree extending above the central figure, along with her comparison with the central tree composition seen very similarly presented the Maya sarcophagus of Pakal, are both concepts I further explore and discuss in support of the Tepantitla figure as an ancestor.75 Headrick used examples from both

Maya and Olmec cultures of cave-mountain-tree assemblages, which serve as the vertical link

71 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 16, 28-29. 72 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 16. 73 Annabeth Headrick, “Gardening with the Great Goddess at Teotihuacan,” in Heart of Creation: The Mesoamerican World and the Legacy of Linda Schele, ed. Andrea Stone (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002), 97. For image of the stone sculpture see Headrick, p. 86 fig. 6.2. 74 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 45-49. 75 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 28-29.

between the underworld and celestial realms, as support for the role of the Tepantitla branches as a Mesoamerican world tree.76

Many of the cosmological interpretations offered by previous scholars, specifically those regarding axis mundi or “world trees,” owe much to the work the Romanian philosopher and historian of religion, Mircea Eliade. Eliade is perhaps most influential in his ideological division of “sacred” and “profane” realms of space and time.77 Besides establishing a division of

“sacred” and “profane,” Eliade also is responsible for the establishment of vocabulary surrounding three distinct cosmic regions: “earth,” “sky,” and “underworld.”78 The cosmic pillar, which is often conceptualized in Mesoamerican cultures as an axis mundi, or “world tree,” connects the three realms in a vertical orientation, and serves as a conduit and means of travel between the realms.79 These basic concepts and terminology have strongly influenced scholars and their work both interpreting and theorizing Mesoamerican cosmology; my work is no exception.

Scholars have also focused on the funerary contexts and ancestral connotations for this mural, whose insights and research have been important informants to my thesis. Esther

Pasztory drew attention to the similarities between the mask-like face of the central figure in the mural and the masks affixed to Teotihuacan ceramic incense burners, but did not at that time pursue the connection in detail.80 Pasztory also noted the domestic and personal nature of these censers. Margaret Young-Sanchez also discussed the similar compositional qualities of the

76 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 30. 77 Wendy Doniger, "Foreword to the 2004 Edition," in Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, by Mircea Eliade (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), xiii. 78 Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 259. 79 Eliade, Shamanism, 259-64. 80 Esther Pasztory, Teotihuacan: An Experiment in Living. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 281.

Teotihuacan style censers (Figures 3, 4, and 5) to a scene on mirror-back from Guatemala

(Figure 10) which closely resembles the figural tableau in the mural at Tepantitla.81

Young-Sanchez explored a possible ancestral or funerary interpretation for the mirror back but does not apply these same funerary interpretations to the Tepantitla mural, though the program is nearly identical. She discussed the similarity in appearance of the figure on the mirror back to the imagery of incense burners, suggesting that the image could be of the priests approaching an incense burner.82 Young-Sanchez concluded that the central figure here could be interpreted as having three different yet interconnected symbolic resonances: a corpse prepared for burial, a cult object (such as an incense burner), and a deity.83 This link between the dead and the central figure allows for reading the figure as an ancestor in the guise of a deity or a ritual object. I follow Young-Sanchez’s example by interpreting the central figure in

Tepantitla’s Patio 2 Mural as a personified, fully realized version of an effigy, used in the context of ancestor veneration.

To understand the role of the central figure as a deified ancestor, it is necessary to further examine ritual practices relating to the veneration of the dead at Teotihuacan. Young-Sanchez proposed that domestic ceremonies at Teotihuacan likely revolved around the dead or ancestors.84 The incense burners and masks that acted as effigies for the dead were likely the paraphernalia used in these rituals.85 The layout of the apartment complexes and the relationships between those dwelling in them and their domestic altars and ancestral burials have been noted previously and will aid in discussing how ancestor veneration functioned in these settings.

81 Young-Sanchez, 333. 82 Young-Sanchez, 326. 83 Young-Sanchez, 335, 348. 84 Young-Sanchez, 347. 85 Young-Sanchez, 348.

Anthropologist Linda Manzanilla explored potential levels of deities at Teotihuacan, proposing a two-level structure that placed the storm god as the patron of Teotihuacan along with individual gods who acted as patrons of different lineages.86 This interpretation does not conflict with, and actually in some ways supports, a theory that various families deified their ancestors, likely the founding ancestor or ancestors of a lineage. Shared kinship or connection of the residents of the compound who would have viewed the mural supports this idea. The private nature of these murals seems to suggest in part a promise of fertility for the intended audience if they continued to perform the necessary rituals.

The mural at Tepantitla resides in a residential and domestic setting, seemingly distancing it from state-sponsored central ritual and other concepts of a dominant deity. From these visual and ideological similarities I base my argument for the reading of the Tepantitla mural as an image that brought the Teotihuacan censer to life and thereby constitutes an image of ancestor veneration. Building on Headrick’s designation of the mural’s tree as a world tree, and a personified life-giving ancestral mountain, along with Pasztory’s observations of the mask and censer-like qualities of the mural, this study seeks to pursue further to the concept of the central figure of the upper mural at Tepantitla as an ancestor. I discuss Mesoamerican beliefs and images of ancestors, specifically those relating to the cave, tree, seed/agricultural, and mountain iconography present in the Tepantitla mural.

86 Linda Manzanilla, “Corporate Groups and Domestic Activities at Teotihuacan,” Latin American Antiquity 7, no. 3 (1996): 239.

CHAPTER IV

METHODS

A. Iconography

Using iconography, and taking into consideration previous scholarly theories, I seek to interpret the meanings of the imagery of the Patio 2 mural at Tepantitla, Teotihuacan.

Iconographical approaches place the objects of aesthetic value as the main concern; they serve as both the principal themes as well as the units of study. Art historical research, especially when applied to cultures without a deciphered writing system like Teotihuacan, regards the “art” which we study as the very proof of the culture’s existence.87 As an art historical study, my research heavily relies on the visual information presented in the Tepantitla murals, and the relevance of this visual information with related art and objects from the city of Teotihuacan first and foremost; after which I further compare to surrounding cultures.

A branch within art history, iconography concerns itself with the subject matter, or

“meaning” of a work over its form.88 Iconography begins to interpret subject matter through the recognition of “pure forms,” defined as certain configurations of line, color, and form as representations of objects.89 Motifs, within this approach, emerge as pure forms that are thought to carry meanings. The composition of motifs, and their relationship to other motifs within their composition create “themes” and “concepts.”90 This approach depends heavily on a basic understanding of the forms and motifs present within a particular style. Erwin Panofsky warns

87 Kubler, The Art and Architecture of Ancient America, 1st edition, 1. 88 Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939), 3. 89 Panofsky, 5. 90 Panofsky, 6.

that when seeing unfamiliar tools and forms in an image, our “practical experience is indispensable, as well as sufficient...but it does not guarantee its correctness.”91

Within the iconographical study of Teotihuacan, George Kubler took the approach of describing these whole configurations and their internal relationships, rather than focusing on the individual motifs and facets individually.92 He found that the repertory of pictorial imagery at

Teotihuacan seemed to reflect the painters’ and sculptors’ seeking after forms of logographic clarity and simplicity, as they combined and compounded associative meanings in pursuit of writing forms.93 Kubler’s assumptions were based on the acknowledgement, however, that because of the lack of legible text attached to Teotihuacan’s imagery, “no image has been clearly or unequivocally identified in the terms intended by its maker.”94 In essence, Kubler sought to identify “themes” within Teotihuacan imagery. More recent scholars, while recognizing the importance of the still-undeciphered Teotihuacan script as an anchoring influence, utilize structural approaches for interpreting the semantic content of Teotihuacan art.95

B. Cross-cultural and Trans-historical Comparisons

This study augments iconographic approach with the cross-cultural study of the use of such themes and icons throughout Mesoamerica. This approach, which casts a “wide net” in order to decipher the meanings of artworks, is quite common in recent Mesoamerican studies, seen in the early studies of Eduard Seler and continuing through the work of more recent

91 Panofsky, 9. 92 Kubler, The Iconography of the Art of Teotihuacan, 3. 93 Kubler, The Iconography of the Art of Teotihuacan, 5. 94 Kubler, The Iconography of the Art of Teotihuacan, 3. 95 E.g. Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity; Taube, “The Teotihuacan Spider Woman.”

scholars such as Headrick and especially Taube.96 This approach is rooted in the observation that cultures throughout ancient Mesoamerica share many common beliefs and traditions; therefore, aspects of one culture often serve as relevant sources of comparison for another. An example of such an approach would be Taube’s previously discussed interpretation of the Teotihuacan mural imagery utilizing religious concepts associated with geographically and chronologically distant

Pueblo peoples, who nonetheless occupy the extreme northern periphery of the Mesoamerican culture area.97 In the present study, artistic approaches for depicting ancestors and the dead, combined with supporting archaeological evidence from the cultural contexts of Maya, Zapotec,

Mixtec, Nahua/Aztec, Puebloan cultures from the American Southwest, including from within

Teotihuacan itself further support my theory for the ancestral interpretation of Tepantitla Patio 2

Mural. The archaeological evidence for the treatment, curation, and interment of the dead are considered in relationship to the art associated with these activities. Theories and interpretations of Teotihuacan-style incense burners, along with Teotihuacan-style stone masks and their connections to ancestor veneration practices, inform the conclusions I have come to regarding this mural’s significance in the context of domestic ritual practices.

The significance of ancestors in Mesoamerican religion is presented, both in ancient and modern contexts. The domains and influence of ancestors in Mesoamerica has been studied in many different scholarly disciplines, and this literature will inform the content of chapter VII.

Relating oral histories and contemporary practice places the mural at Tepantitla in a broader social context, seen in diverse times and places. In this thesis I will discuss images in ancient

Mesoamerican art that have been interpreted as ancestral representations to support my theory.

96 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity; Eduard Seler, Collected Works in North- and South-American Linguistics and Archaeology (Culver City: Labyrinthos, 2002); Taube, “The Teotihuacan Spider Woman.” 97 Taube, “The Teotihuacan Spider Woman,” 141-43.

A cosmopolitan city, Teotihuacan interacted with many other Mesoamerican societies, including the Maya to the east.98 Cross-cultural similarities with regards to origin stories and ancestral roles in Mesoamerica serve as reasonable evidence to make a case for similar interpretations in Teotihuacan. As an important society in Mexico’s history, Teotihuacan was in many ways unique, yet not so unique as to disregard useful comparisons with other ancient and modern cultures.99 Although images and their meanings change across cultures and time, scenes repeated across Mesoamerica with well-known meanings and associations should not be isolated from interpretations of those whose cultures and meanings are perhaps less currently known.

Indeed, due to its similarities to other Mesoamerican cultures such as the Maya and the later

Aztec, scholars often rely on parallels to these and other Mesoamerican cultures to interpret

Teotihuacan art and to understand its religious and political structures.100

In his criticism of cross-cultural comparisons in Mesoamerican art history, George

Kubler warned against this practice, proposing instead to consider the total visual configuration of an ancient site as the primary source of information.101 Kubler’s critique of the method is based largely within its application in the realms of iconography. Kubler states that visible forms often repeated over time may acquire different meanings throughout, including the purposeful disjunction achieved when a successor civilization refashions their inheritance by gearing the predecessor's forms into new meanings.102 Taking his advice, I do use cross-cultural comparison with caution, citing first the iconography seen within Teotihuacan (primarily in the incense burners), using archaeological evidence within Teotihuacan (looking at the use of apartments and funerary contexts) to support the proposed meanings of this patio mural. Cross-cultural

98 Cowgill, Ancient Teotihuacan, 21. 99 Cowgill, Ancient Teotihuacan, 5. 100 Helmke and Nielsen, 138. 101 George Kubler, “Period, Style, and Meaning in Ancient American Art,” New Literary History 1 (1970): 142. 102 Kubler, “Period, Style, and Meaning in Ancient American Art,” 143.

comparisons come as secondary evidence, serving primarily as a backdrop to examine widespread and fundamental themes repeated throughout Mesoamerica as well as aspects of cosmology considered by many scholars to be not exclusive to one time and place. When reasonable evidence arises for certain traditions having roots in Teotihuacan, such as the Aztec butterfly cult, these are presented, but are in no way the primary or only supporting evidences.103

103 Janet Catherine Berlo, “The Warrior and the Butterfly: Central Mexican Ideologies of Sacred Warfare and Teotihuacan Iconography,” in Text and Image in Pre-Columbian Art: Essays on the Interrelationship of the Visual Verbal Arts, ed. Janet Catherine Berlo (Oxford: B.A.R, 1983), 99; Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 47; Laurette Séjourné, “Interpretación de un jeroglífico Teotihuacano,” Cuadernos Americanos 124 (1962: 144-46.

CHAPTER V

ICONOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS

A. World Trees and the Cosmic Center

The frontality and centrality of Tepantitla’s main figure set it apart from the other two flanking figures. The axial quality of the tree branches stemming from above a central, mountain-like figure with a central cave-like opening at its base, lend themselves to the viewing of these elements as an axis mundi, and the tree as a world tree.104 Referencing back to Eliade, the world tree connects the earth vertically to the other realms of sky above and the underworld below.105 The horizontal planes of Mural 2, and the space below it, Mural 3, could very plausibly represent the cosmological spaces of underworld (the space of Mural 3), earth (the plane marked by waves of agriculture that the two figures making offerings stand upon in Mural

2), and the celestial (what remains of singing birds in the upper portions of Mural 2).106 This world tree, or the “cave-mountain-tree” assemblage, connects those realms.107 The Aztec warrior butterfly cult, in which the souls of warriors slain in battle transform into butterflies, is believed to have roots in Teotihuacan.108 Thus the spiders and butterflies could be seen as souls travelling up into the celestial realm through the channel of the tree branches, and the cave could be an entrance or passageway between the earth and the underworld. Picturing an ancestral

104 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 30. 105 Eliade, Shamanism, 259, 269-71. 106 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 30. Headrick interprets the bird head on the headdress as inhabiting the celestial realm. 107 Pasztory, Teotihuacan: An Experiment in Living, 85-94. 108 Berlo, “The Warrior and the Butterfly;” Annabeth Headrick, “Butterfly War at Teotihuacan,” in Ancient Mesoamerican Warfare, ed. M. Kathryn Brown and Travis W. Stanton (New York: AltaMira Press, 2003); Séjourné, “Interpretación de un jeroglífico Teotihuacano,” 99.

figure at the crux of these passageways is consistent with Mesoamerican cosmologies, with ancestors mediating between different realms of the cosmos.109

B. Agricultural, Aquatic, and Floral Motifs

The area at the base of the central figure that has been likened to a cave or mouth opening is delineated by an inverted U-shape that curls slightly outward. Above it is another banded arch, containing a row of three circle motifs oriented horizontally. Flowering plants bloom and grow up from the top edge of this archway, alternating between profile and frontally-facing flowers. The large four-petaled flower featured frontally at the top of the arch is an image commonly repeated in Teotihuacan art and has been interpreted as a representation of the four corners of the cosmos.110 Inside the cave-like space float maize kernels and seeds.

The base of the figure gives way to bordered wave motifs, which are filled with starfish and spiny shells. Large conch shells ride the backs of these wave motifs. Among the Maya, the ritual symbolism of resurrection is imbued conch shells, which may or may not relate to its

109 Marcus emphasizes the high regard with which Zapotec thought of ancestors with, and the roles of the ancestors as participants in the community even after death. The ancestors were able to intervene supernaturally on behalf of the living, thereby mediating the realms. See Joyce Marcus, “Archaeology and Religion: A Comparison of the Zapotec and Maya,” World Archaeology 10, no. 2 (1978): 175. Roberts explains the openings through which gods first emerged and through which spirits return to join the ancestors in Pueblo cosmology. The kiva is an important feature in ritual space, which signifies this opening. See Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr., The Village of the Great Kivas on the Zuni Reservation, New Mexico, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 111 (Washington, D.C: Smithsonian, 1932), 57. Taube explains that this is the location for petitioning ancestors. See Karl A. Taube, "The Teotihuacan Cave of Origin: The Iconography and Architecture of Emergence Mythology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest," RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 12, (1986): 76. Taube also asserts that a Piedras Negras stela “portrays the breath soul of the ancestor exhaled from the underworld into the sky.” See Karl A. Taube, “Maws of Heaven and Hell: The Symbolism of the Centipede and Serpent in Classic Maya Religion,” in Antropología de la Eternidad: La Muerte en la Cultura Maya ed. Andrés Ciudad Ruiz, Mario Humberto Ruz Sosa, and Maria Josefa Iglesias Ponce de León (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 2003), 433 and Karl A. Taube, "The Symbolism Of Jade In Classic Maya Religion,” Ancient Mesoamerica 16, no. 1 (2005): 23-50. Headrick (The Teotihuacan Trinity, 49) states that in residential Teotihuacan, “the ancestral dead buried in those patios functioned as mediators between the living and the gods.” 110 Erika Carrillo, “La Ventilla,” in Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, ed. Matthew H. Robb, Rubén Cabrera Castro, and David M. Carballo (San Francisco, CA: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 2017), 381.

symbolism in Teotihuacan art.111 Teotihuacan rituals directed toward the dead likely concerned mountains and rain--elements both discussed below in regards to the iconography of the

Tepantitla mural. The rituals associated with patio altars at Teotihuacan likely concerned prayers for life giving water.112

C. Headdress and Garments

Red and yellow triangles border the rounded shawl-like upper garment of the central figure, and although only the sleeves remain visible, many scholars interpret it as a quechquemitl. The gendered interpretation of this article of clothing has already been discussed, along with its significance that has led some scholars to associate this figure to a goddess cult.

Green beaded bands appear on the figure’s wrists and the sleeve edge on the upper arms. Wave- like swirls filled with star-shaped icons extend outward and down from beneath the large nose bar and pour over the plants on the arch-shaped “cave” element at the figure’s base.

The large headdress in the mural features prominently the face of a wide-eyed bird, identified as the quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno), which lives in a very limited microclimate of high rainfall and humidity to the east of Teotihuacan.113 Headdresses, especially of the very large and elaborate type including this one, have been viewed as elements that identify political authority figures throughout Mesoamerica.114 The top tier of this headdress flaunts a wide row of light green feathers, which extend upwards and outwards from blue, red, and green patterned bases. Red and yellow triangular trim, in the same pattern as is seen on the figure’s sleeves,

111 Karl A. Taube, “Flower Mountain: Concepts of Life, Beauty, and Paradise among the Classic Maya,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 45 (2004): 79. 112 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 48. 113 Helmke and Nielsen, “Of Gods and Rituals,” 136. 114 Saburo Sugiyama, “The Feathered Serpent Pyramid at Teotihuacan: Monumentality and Sacrificial Burials,” in Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, ed. Matthew H. Robb, Rubén Cabrera Castro, and David M. Carballo (San Francisco, CA: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 2017), 58.

serves as the outer trim of the structures supporting the green feathers on the left and right sides of the headdress, as well as the intermediate sides.

Monumental in scale, the edges of the headdress extend out past the width of the figure’s outstretched arms. A set of three red feathers on either side of the headdress overlaps the bottom layer of green feathers, adding perspective and dimensionality to the otherwise very flat and frontal tableau. A layer of yellow fringe extending behind the head and shoulders of the figure implies a rear facet to the headpiece. Clara Millon highlighted the military aspect of leadership signified by feathered headdresses seen in the fresco murals at Teotihuacan, building on the tradition of sacred warrior statuses among Teotihuacan elites.115 The use of elaborate headdresses by actual living individuals in Teotihuacan, supporting the interpretation of the central figure’s headdress as a symbol of actual human status or military office, and not just a mythical characteristic of a deity.

D. Fanged Nose Plaque

Although nose plaques are a fairly common occurrence in Teotihuacan, both in art and the real-life wearable objects themselves, “fanged” examples similar to the nose bar pictured in

Tepantitla are more unusual. The nose bar seen in the Tepantitla mural features a horizontal element encompassing a row of three small circles, with five vertical “fangs” extending beneath.

While the three central “fangs” point directly downward, the two outer “fangs” curve outward.

Such fanged nose bars exist in two dimensional Teotihuacan art on occasion; their real life counterparts are considered extremely rare.116 The fanged nose bar has been associated with the

115 Clara Millon, “Tassel Headdress Procession,” in Feathered Serpents and Flowering Trees: Reconstructing the Murals of Teotihuacan ed. Kathleen Berrin (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1988), 223. 116 Matthew H. Robb, “Nose Plaque, 200-250,” in Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 2017), 263.

Teotihuacan water deities; in some cases, figures wearing it are identified as humans impersonating the storm god.117 Matthew H. Robb calls this style of nosepiece with a vertical bar above fang-like elements the “Type B nose plaque.”118 One of two greenstone examples

(Figure 11) found in Burial 13 of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid features the same row of three circles seen in the Tepantitla mural; however, in this real-life example, only two “fang” elements curve downward. The physical existence of these Type B nose plaques as jewelry elements worn by and buried with real people leads away from the assumption that figures shown wearing these plaques are deities and points toward a funerary and ancestral interpretation.

A fresco mural from the Tetitla compound at Teotihuacan (Figure 12), often interpreted as depicting the same entity seen in the Tepantitla mural, features an impressive frontally-facing figure with a similar bird-head feathered headdress, outstretched arms, red and yellow triangular patterned trim on its garment and headdress elements, and a similar fanged nose bar. Unlike the five-fanged nose bar seen in the Tepantitla mural, the nose bar here only has three fangs, yet the horizontally lined circles on the top bar remain similar. Although Taube cited the presence of a spider motif in the Tetitla mural in his case for a “Teotihuacan Spider Woman” interpretation, I find the placement under the figures arm not especially prominent.119 Following Klein and others, Megan E. O’Neil associated the frontality of the Tetitla figure with Teotihuacan supernatural entities.120 However, as discussed previously in the literature review, the application of an explicit limitation of frontality to deities in Teotihuacan art is one I find

117 David M. Carballo, “Tripod Vessel, 400-500,” in Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, ed. Matthew H. Robb, Rubén Cabrera Castro, and David M. Carballo (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 2017), 342; Matthew H. Robb, “The Maize God,” in Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, ed. Matthew H. Robb, Rubén Cabrera Castro, and David M. Carballo (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 2017), 151. 118 Robb, “Nose Plaque, 200-250,” 263. 119 Taube, “The Teotihuacan Spider Woman,” 110. 120 Megan E. O’Neil, “Stucco-Painted Vessels from Teotihuacan: Integration of Ceramic and Mural Traditions,” in Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, ed. Matthew H. Robb, Rubén Cabrera Castro, and David M. Carballo (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 2017), 184.

problematic. Though the costume elements and frontality of this figure bear notable similarities,

I do not interpret either as strictly a deity representation. The hands of the Tetitla figures emit waves filled with hand, face, and other glyphs, and the agricultural context, world tree, and secondary figures are absent in this composition. It should be noted that the Tetitla figure is not an isolated “portrait” in its context; it is essentially repeated along the lower half of the Tetitla portico wall. Considering the context of the Tetitla mural in a domestic location--an area in

Teotihuacan I argue focused on ancestors--I would tend to associate this figure with ancestors, humans in ritual costumes, or even “deified” ancestors.

E. Comparison to Theatre-type Censers and Censer Rituals

Looking at other examples of domestic art at Teotihuacan helps put this the Tepantitla mural image into a ritual context that centers on ancestral veneration. Censers were important ritual paraphernalia at Teotihuacan, often found in domestic contexts including personal and family shrines. Often these censers are associated with burials; they were likely used in rituals commemorating the dead.121 Although many different types of ceramic figurines have been discovered in domestic contexts at Teotihuacan, the “half conical” mold-made busts were probably commemorative mortuary bundles placed in shrines and used in mortuary practices.122

Ceramic representations of “enthroned” figures likely represent mortuary bundles carried on a litter as part of a funerary procession.123 Teotihuacan-style effigy incense burners are also found in Guatemala, where Young-Sanchez also compared them to the shape of the bundled dead, who

“must have closely resembled effigy incense-burners: probably such corpses were in fact the

121 Cowgill, “State And Society At Teotihuacan, Mexico,” 141-42. 122 Annabeth Headrick, "The Street of the Dead ... It Really Was: Mortuary Bundles at Teotihuacan," Ancient Mesoamerica 10, no. 1 (1999): 76; Kathleen Berrin and Esther Pasztory, eds. Teotihuacan: Art from the City of the Gods (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993), cat. 61. 123 Cowgill, Ancient Teotihuacan, 312; Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, p. 52, figs. 3.3, 3.4, p. 54, fig. 3.7.

model for this kind of incense burner.”124 Teotihuacan theatre-type censers were often created from mold-made ceramic pieces that were then assembled to create unique compositions.

Although somewhat standardized, each example found expresses its own depiction of people, architectural elements, and the blending of the two. Masked funerary bundles are prominent as subjects of Teotihuacan censers.125 Both Teotihuacan censers and Teotihuacan stone masks have been interpreted by scholars as effigies of the dead as well as ritual objects.126

Discovered in a patio at the center of Structure 5 at La Ventilla, a ceramic incense burner

(Figure 3) shares stylistic and thematic iconography with the Tepantitla Mural.127 Another relatively high-status compound at Teotihuacan, La Ventilla was located just slightly to the southwest of the city’s heart, near buildings dedicated to the manufacturing of fine stonework, including Teotihuacan’s stone masks.128 Like most theater-type censers, this incense burner is composed of a an hourglass base which served as a combustion chamber, topped with an inverted lid, a chimney, and various layers of ceramic decoration surrounding an anthropomorphic face or mask. Two seashells originating from the Gulf of Mexico and the

Pacific Ocean sat at the base of its pit, and the remains of maize and bean seeds were found along with pinewood and oak charcoal inside the base of the censer.129 Like the central

Tepantitla figure, the masked face of this censer sports large ear discs, an elaborate plumed headdress with avian features, and a large layered beaded chestpiece. The censer mask also wears a large nosepiece, though it is not fanged. A large, open-beaked bird head which would

124 Young-Sanchez, 344. 125 Karl A. Taube, “Structure 10L-16 and its early Classic Antecedents: Fire and the evocation and resurrection of K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo,” In Understanding Early Classic Copan, ed. Marcello A. Canuto, Ellen E. Bell, and Robert J. Sharer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2004), 271. 126 Young-Sanchez, 335, 348. 127 Carrillo, 366. 128 Carrillo, 361-63. 129 Carrillo, 366.

emit smoke when in use, emerges just below the mask on the censer. This large bird head is similar to the one seen in the headdress at Tepantitla. The main chimney of the censer extends upward behind the frontal facade vertically, inhabiting the same space as the “world tree” seen in the Tepantitla composition. The shells placed beneath this censer align with the spiral shells, starfish, and wave iconography at the base of the Tepantitla figure, and the bean seeds and maize found in its base manifest in reality the maize and seeds pictured in the “cave” area of the

Tepantitla figure’s base.

Another incense burner from La Ventilla (Figure 4) displaying typical iconography associated with theater-type censers was discovered in a patio in the Artisans Compound.130

This censer was constructed in the typical fashion for its type, with an hourglass base, inverted lid, and decorative “theater” like elements surrounding a central mask-like face. A large plumed headdress extending in layers above a horizontal face above the face features three butterfly adornos on the second tier to the top. One central set of plumes adorns the top layer of the headdress, and feathered plumes extend above the frontal bird faces featured on each side just below it. Four very large yellow four-petaled flowers, a typical motif at Teotihuacan discussed previously as symbolic cosmograms, prominently adorn the central layer of the headdress.

These floral motifs are bordered with a trim of slightly curved lines. Circular adornos with similar borders flank the upper plumes of the headdress and the sides of the composition. A large nose bar and huge ear spools adorn the central face. Most notably, the base of the lid features a shallow inverted U-shaped arch placed beneath the edge of a cavelike opening, very much like the motif in the base of the figure in the Tepantitla mural. The three butterfly adornos may relate to a military status held by the individual which this incense burner venerates, if the

130 Carrillo, 381.

Aztec cult of warrior souls transforming into butterflies in the afterlife has roots in Teotihuacan as both Laurette Séjourné and Janet Catherine Berlo have suggested.131

The basic structure of this headdress is similar to the one seen at Tepantitla; however this one features two frontal bird faces rather than one and especially emphasizes the flower motifs.

The structural similarities, combined with the use of butterfly, floral, avian, and cave adornos, provide a strong basis for ideological and ritual meanings likely shared between this incense burner and the Tepantitla mural.

Fire was a transformative agent in funerary rituals at Teotihuacan.132 The very function of these ceramic censers as receptacles for burning incense and offerings immediately places them in the sphere of spiritual communications. The widespread association with burning and ancestor worship is paramount throughout Mesoamerica, as I will explain more in depth in the

Maya context in the cultural context section of this chapter. Fire and smoke are presented as important thematic elements in the Tepantitla mural through the “smoke” or vital breath emitted from the hands of the profile figures scattering incense, along with the fire and smoke rituals associated with the incense burners which so closely resemble the central figure.

The schematic and thematic convergence between these censers and the central figure of the Tepantitla mural beg a closer look at their similarities both in their iconic symbolism and ritual implications. Another mural from Teotihuacan (Figure 13) seamlessly fuses the elements of burning censers, offerings and smoke, agriculture, and ancestor veneration. Originally located in the so-called “Temple of Agriculture” in Teotihuacan, this now lost mural shows similar iconography with the Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural (Figure 1), but was created for the walls of a

131 Berlo, “The Warrior and the Butterfly,” 99; Séjourné, “Interpretación de un jeroglífico Teotihuacano,” 144-46. 132 Jesper Nielsen and Christophe Helmke, “‘Where the Sun Came into Being’: Rites of Pyrolatry, Transition, and Transformation in Early Classic Teotihuacan,” in Smoke, Flames, and the Human Body in Mesoamerican Ritual Practice, ed. Vera Tiesler and Andrew K. Scherer (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 2018), 77.

temple rather than a family compound. In this mural, two large schematized, frontally facing figures anchor the composition. Like the central figure in the Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural, these figures bear fanged nosepieces, feathered headdresses, wide necklaces, ambiguous clothing, and hierarchical scale. Unlike the Tepantitla figure, however, the two monumental figures have no visible arms. The smaller human figures in the Temple of Agriculture mural are all shown in profile.

In both murals, the smaller figures give offerings to the larger figures. Large maize kernels embellish the bottom portion of the Temple of Agriculture mural, beneath layers of wave motifs. The monumental figures in the Temple of Agriculture mural have been identified as mortuary bundles, or theater-type censers in the form of mortuary bundles.133 Rising smoke and flames suggest either burned offerings before the figures, or the cremation of very important individuals, wrapped as bundles with masks and headdresses. Smoke and flame across

Mesoamerica serve as transformative agents within ancestor veneration practices, converting tangible material into smoke and vapor for the consumption of ancestral spirits.134

The proposal of a Teotihuacan mural depicting humans alongside what could be sculptural figures, personified censers, or even mortuary bundles, paves the way for interpreting the Tepantitla Patio 2 mural in a similar manner. With heavy imagery and association with agriculture and cycles of growth, ancestors influenced the proper changings of season and harvest needed for survival. Likening the central figure in the Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural to a ceramic effigy censer implies the actions of smoke and veneration rituals that likely occurred in the residential areas of Teotihuacan.

133 Taube, “Structure 10L-16 and its Early Classic Antecedents,” 270-71. 134 Joel W. Palka, “Where There’s Fire There’s Smoke: Lacandon Maya Burning Rites and Cremation Symbolism,” in Smoke, Flames, and the Human Body in Mesoamerican Ritual Practice, ed. Vera Tiesler and Andrew K. Scherer (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 2018), 289.

Although the theater-type censers discussed above display typical configurations of

Teotihuacan’s incense burners, one unique example of censer lid bears ideological and iconographical similarities to the Tepantitla mural within its burial contexts and merits a closer look. This incense-burner lid (Figure 5), excavated from the Oztoyahualco residential compound of Teotihuacan in the 1980s, is unique in that it features a figure with outstretched arms standing fully upright.135 Like the Tepantitla figure and the other censer figures discussed, the face bears a large nose plaque, huge ear spools, and an impressively scaled multi-tiered feather headdress.

This unique censer lid, along with its affixed adornos, were broken and dispersed around the body of the deceased but have since been mostly reattached by conservators.136 These adornos included feathered shields now attached to the figure’s hands, as well as two triple mountain symbols, four triple scrolls, four-petaled flower motifs, mica disks, and a bird. Agriculturally themed adornos were placed to the south of the body, these pieces included representations of maize, gourds, cotton buds, and a frothy bowl. The iconographic overlap of these elements with

Tepantitla’s mural is notable, but what make these examples exceptional to the typical type of theater censer is how alive this figure looks.

In summary, themes and motifs presented within the forms of the sculptural incensarios share much in common with those presented in the two-dimensional Tepantitla mural. These include the half-length presentation (as seen in the first two censers discussed), intended frontality, large plumed headdresses with frontally oriented avian features, large nose plaques, bases with cave-like elements (in some cases containing seeds), and the presence of incense.

135 Linda R. Manzanilla, “Incensario Lid, 350-550,” in Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, ed. Matthew H. Robb, Rubén Cabrera Castro, and David M. Carballo (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 2017), 206. 136 Manzanilla, “Incensario Lid, 350-550,” 206.

The repeated configuration of motifs within a recognizable structure creates a theme.137 The theme of a frontally facing figure presenting these qualities, in the mural, is completed by the two profile-facing figures presenting incense. In the case of the censers, the role of the flanking figures within the theme would be filled by the current inhabitants of the residence, the probable descendents of the one honored in the censer.

The reciprocity between ancestors and the living is expressed through the exchange of burned sacrifices and prayers in return for blessings of fertility and successful agriculture. Fire, light, heat, and the sun, along with air, wind, smoke, and breath, earth, and water, are all important elements to Mesoamerican agriculture and also correlate to the practice of burnt incense offerings. These elements all revolve around a solar centrality linking the agricultural model to the cosmic entities that interact with human life cycles.138 These understandings and the attention given to ancestors, both in art and in Mesoamerican religious practice, serve as a backdrop and as supporting evidence for my ancestral interpretation of this mural. If Teotihuacan censers did in fact represent ancestral beings, as mortuary bundles or otherwise, the central figure in the Tepantitla Mural could very plausibly depict or personify either one of those things.

137 Panofsky, 6. 138 Palka, 289.

CHAPTER VI

COMPARISON TO ANCESTRAL REPRESENTATIONS IN MESOAMERICAN ART

The differentiations between ancestors and gods in the art of ancient Mesoamerica are paramount to my interpretation and analysis of the Tepantitla Mural. In the almanac manuscripts of the Mexica and Aztecs, supernaturals are identifiable by their signature combinations of facial paint, coloring or bodysuit, and headdresses.139 Ear ornaments, nose ornaments, pectorals, and other features of clothing and jewelry are also important to their personal ensembles. Images of the supernaturals are compiled of multiple costume pieces, which combined create the teotl, or divinity, of a deity.140 Different accoutrements symbolize aspects of deities; therefore, overlapping may occur between individual deities as well as variations of a deity when expressed in a different aspect.141 It is the sum of the total of costume elements that identify a specific god.

This same basic approach of the teotl, or sum of the divine energy of a deity and its physical presentations, also pertains to the conceptualization of deities by the Maya.142

The almanacs and calendars of the Aztec and Mixtec give scholars an opportunity to see the same pantheon, or group of deities depicted by different artists and scribes across time and space. The Aztec divided the night into nine hours, and the day into thirteens, with a deity designated for every hour.143 Names of gods in many codices are known because they are repeated as the “Nine Lords of the Night” in both the Aztec and Maya calendar, though the

139 Elizabeth Hill Boone, Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 40 140 Arild Hvidtfeldt, Teotl and Ixiptlatli: Some Central Concepts in Ancient Mexican Religion (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1958), 77-100. 141 Boone, Cycles of Time and Meaning, 43. 142 Stephen Houston and David Stuart, “Of Gods, Glyphs and Kings: Divinity and Rulership among the Classic Maya,” Antiquity 70 no. 268 (1996): 297. 143 Alfonso Caso, Los Calendarios Prehispánico, (Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricos, 1967), 43.

specific names of the Maya lords are unknown.144 Likewise, the Tonalamatl Aubin and the

Codex Borbonicus also list a series of thirteen deities associated with a series of thirteen days or trecena.145 The Histoire du Mechique identifies the same thirteen deities of the days with thirteen levels of heaven.146 The overlap of the same characters listed in association with the same days and times give scholars both names and examples of the same deities.

A tribal patron elevated to supreme status, Huitzilopochtli (“Hummingbird on the Left”) represents an exceptional character in the Aztec/Mexica cosmology of deities. Not an archaic god, Huitzilopochtli is absent from the corpus of primary gods in the divinary codices. The principal Mexica deity, a solar god of war and tribal patron, Huitzilopochtli was introduced late into the milieu of central Mexican ideology, probably long after the pantheon of the tonalpohualli calendar was fixed.147 Huitzilopochtli’s cult bundle was carried throughout the long migration of the Mexica into the valley of Mexico. After their good fortune under his guidance, the Mexica elevated him to supreme status.148 This movement from cult deity and migratory leader to a major solar deity is remarkable. Huitzilopochtli is an unique example of a human individual elevated to status of deity, at times occupying space as one pictured as a venerated being and, at later times, a god.

Linda Manzanilla, who has been excavating the Xalla compound at Teotihuacan since

2000, theorized that complexes housing extended families shared sanctuaries and shrines to

144 Merideth Paxton, “Solar-Based Cartographic Traditions of the Mexica and the Yucatec Maya,” in Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests: Intellectual Interchange Between the Northern Maya Lowlands and Highland Mexico in the Late Postclassic Period, ed. Gabrielle Vail and Christine L. Hernández (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 2010), 291. 145 Boone, Cycles of Time and Meaning, 45. 146 Ángel María Garibay K., Teogonía e Historia de los Mexicanos: Tres Opúsculos del Siglo XVI, 3rd edition (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1979), 103. 147 Boone, Cycles of Time and Meaning, 40. 148 Gordon Brotherson, “Huitzilopochtli and What Was Made of Him,” in Mesoamerican Archaeology: New Approaches, ed. Norman Hammond (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974), 155–66.

common ancestors in the ritual patios discussed previously in this thesis.149 She also theorized that in these independent-family complexes, the ritual courtyards served as shrines to a patron god.150 This is just one example of the perceived overlap in the realms of gods and ancestors in

Teotihuacan specifically.

Through an examination of ancient Mesoamerican images of ancestors, it is possible to discern similarities to and potential influences between these representations and the Tepantitla

Mural. The urban city of Teotihuacan certainly did not exist in a vacuum. With DNA evidence of diverse ethnic populations within the city, influences of various Mesoamerican art styles, traditions, and ways of thinking certainly interacted with and informed Teotihuacan’s beliefs and practices.151 Cultures with written traditions like the Maya and Mixtec allow scholars specific understandings of relationships between imagery and the representation of specific named individuals, as discussed in the case of the “Nine Lords of the Night.” Zapotec genealogical slabs and Nahua (Aztec) treatment of dead also give insights into relevant regional treatment of and presentations of ancestors. From within its own archeological context, I will discuss art from Teotihuacan and its ancestral connotations. Overarching themes across cultural regions relating to ancestral portrayal informed the art of Teotihuacan to some extent, and should be taken into account when seeking to interpret the mural at Tepantitla Patio 2. The formats and

149 Manzanilla, “Teotihuacan Apartment Compounds,” 96-101. 150 Manzanilla, “Corporate Groups and Domestic Activities at Teotihuacan,” 228-46; Manzanilla, “Teotihuacan Apartment Compounds,” 96. 151 T. Douglas Price, James H. Burton, P. D. Fullaga, Lori E. Wright, Jane Buikstra, and V. Tiesler, “Strontium Isotopes and the Study of Human Mobility in Ancient Mesoamerica,” Latin American Antiquity 19, no. 2 (2008): 167-80; T. Douglas Price, Linda Manzanilla, and William D. Middleton, “Immigration and the Ancient City of Teotihuacan in Mexico: A Study Using Strontium Isotope Ratios in Human Bone and Teeth,” Journal of Archaeological Science 27 (2000): 903-13; Christine D. White, Michael W. Spence, Fred J. Longstaffe, Hilary Stuart-Williams, and Kimberly R. Law, “Geographic Identities of the Sacrificial Victims from the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, Teotihuacan: Implications for the Nature State of Power,” Latin American Antiquity 13 no. 2 (2002): 217- 38.

visual cues used to label one as an ancestor in these various forms of art are pertinent to define, compare, and contrast.

The ancient Maya of the Yucatan peninsula and adjacent regions prioritized ancestral images and images of ancestral veneration within their visual and written tradition. So important was the depiction of ancestors in Maya art that Schele and Miller state, “the purpose of art was to document the bloodlines of Classic Maya kings...records of parents and ancestors transferring power to their children consume a large part of Maya pictorial imagery and writing.”152 One of the most striking art historical discoveries depicting Maya kingship lineage and ancestor veneration, the sarcophagus of K’inich Janaab Pakal at Palenque, records and pictures seven of his ancestors (some depicted twice), in chronological order.153 Progress in reading Maya inscriptions enabled art historians and archaeologists in identifying individuals in its imagery, and in 1958, shortly after the modern discovery of the sarcophagus, Heinrich Berlin identified the names of the ancestor figures through the glyphs next to each of their headdresses.154 The lid of the sarcophagus depicts Pakal, the occupant of the sarcophagus, suspended in a profile view, at a moment of transformation (Figure 14). His body is presented just above the maws of a giant centipede, which denotes the horizon opening to the Underworld in Maya art.155 This placement puts him at the threshold of death, transformation, and the underworld. Behind him emerges a cruciform tree, likely referencing the axis mundi or cosmological center of the world.

The sides of the sarcophagus bear the names and images of Pakal’s ancestors. The ancestors sprout out of the earth as trees and plants (Figure 15), each bearing a jade pendant

152 Linda Schele and Mary Ellen Miller, Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art (New York: George Braziller; Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Museum, 1986), 14. 153 Linda Schele and Peter Mathews, The Code of Kings: The Language of Seven Sacred Maya Temples and Tombs (New York: Scribner, 1998), 110-28. 154 Heinrich Berlin, “El Glifo ‘Emblema’ en La Inscripciones Mayas,” Journal de la Societe des Americanistes 47 (1958), 111-19. 155 James L. Fitzsimmons, Death and the Classic Maya Kings (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), 125.

necklace around their necks with the word ik’ which translates to “breath, wind, life.”156 The terrestrial qualities of these ancestors show them as sprouting up and taking on agricultural attributes rather than attributes of gods, as is sometimes the case in other Maya depictions of ancestors. The grouping of ancestors has been likened to an orchard; in Maya areas, orchard fruits were inherited resources, planted in the past and reaped by descendants.157 The detail of

Ahkal Mo’ Nahb II (Figure 15) exemplifies the approach used to depict Pakal’s ancestors. The leaves and branches sprouting up from the ancestor’s headdress and behind the body, along with his placement half in the earth, exemplify the proximity of ancestors to the earth and illustrates their integral position in the realms of cultivation and successful agriculture. Just as descendants inherited orchards and their fruits, so royal lineages inherited the fruits of political power and authority in Maya society.158 Constructed by Pakal’s son, this funerary program confirms the lineage of rulers and promotes Pakal to the position of a deified ancestor, taking on attributes of the Maize God, a principal deity associated with elite legitimacy, creation, and fertility.159

In sculptural art of the Maya, censers became both representations of ancestors or gods and conceptual miniatures of buildings.160 These instruments for conjuring the presence of ancestors mimic in real life the Maya approach of illustrating the apparitions of supernaturals from smoke or the jaws of serpents in Maya art. An image from the tripod cylinder vessel known to scholars as the “Dazzler,” excavated at Copan (Figure 16), has been identified as a frontal portrait of the Copan dynastic founder K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’, presented both as human and as a Teotihuacan-style talud-tablero building. As a deceased person, K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’

156 Fitzsimmons, 127; see also Taube “The Symbolism of Jade in Classic Maya Religion.” 157 Patricia A. McAnany, Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Society (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 75-76. 158 McAnany, Living with the Ancestors, 76. 159 Fitzsimmons, Death and the Classic Maya Kings, 57. 160 Taube, “Structure 10L-16 and its Early Classic Antecedents.”

is here presented in the status of an ancestor.161 Like the Tepantitla mural, this figure is presented legless and with outstretched arms. The configuration of Yax K’uk’ Mo’ from the

Dazzler vessel clearly demonstrates that frontal presentation is not limited to gods in Maya art.

Drawn from the Teotihuacan canon, this Maya piece may indirectly imply that frontality was not limited to depictions of gods in Teotihuacan either.162 The absence of a mutually exclusive relationship between frontally facing beings and deities in Mesoamerican art brings into question the previous “Tlaloc,” “Great Goddess,” and “Spider Woman,” interpretations of the frontally- facing figure in the Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural.

A similar cartouche (Figure 17) presented also in a frontal manner depicts the same venerated dynastic founder at Rosalila, with large earplugs, a nose plaque, and a knot over the mouth. The knot over the mouth denotes death in Maya imagery.163 Although certainly not the only way ancestors are depicted in Maya art, I choose these examples based on their similarities in representational style to the central figure in the Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural (Figure 1). These two images and their proximity to smoke and censers strongly influence my position on the central Tepantitla figure’s identity as an ancestral figure. Maya censers, many of which share similarities to those found at Teotihuacan, and specifically the effigy censers, have already been proposed as representations of ancestors.164

161 Taube, “Structure 10L-16 and its Early Classic Antecedents,” 281. 162 Matthew Looper, personal communication, 2018. This unique piece fuses pottery forms from Teotihuacan, Kaminaljuyu, and the central Peten area with Maya pictorial and glyphic conventions. See Robert J. Sharer, “Founding Events and Teotihuacan Connections at Copan, Honduras,” in The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interaction, ed. Geoffrey E. Braswell (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 154- 56. 163 Ricardo Agurcia F. “Copan: Art, Science and Dynasty,” in Maya, ed. Peter Schmidt, Mercedes de la Garza, and Enrique Nalda. (New York: Rizzoli, 1998), 351. 164 Marilyn A. Masson and Carlos Peraza Lope, “Kukulkan/Quetzalcoatl, Death God, and Creation Mythology of Burial Shaft Temples at Mayapan,” Mexicon 29 (2000): 77-85.

Classic Maya monuments sometimes feature ancestors in the uppermost registers of compositions, placing them in a celestial realm, different than that of a dark underworld.165 The dead are thought to inhabit different realms. There are those that abide in the deep watery underworld, but the dead regarded as ancestors inhabit celestial realms.166 With this distinction in mind, looking at Pakal’s position on his sarcophagus lid, (Figure 14) we can see that it illustrates a critical moment between those two realms, where Pakal’s body levitates upward, out of the maws of the Underworld. A similar layered perspective of differing locations for the afterlife may be expressed in the split composition of the mural at Tepantitla, Teotihuacan.

Taube also notes that floating or falling flowers and jewels in Maya art “mark atmosphere and place of honored spirits” in scenes that often contain burning censers.167 Interpretations of headdresses and humans as metaphors for temples or houses of gods permeate Maya literature, for instance, when looking at examples of a Tikal graffito, which Brian Stross describes as a seated man whose head is implied by the roof.168 Headdresses worn by authority figures also placed the wearer in the position of axis mundi, an ideological liminal space and center of the world, and further asserted the wearer as a living embodiment of a temple, both architecturally and as a space occupied by divinity.

The Aztec culture is attributed with naming the city of Teotihuacan and visiting the partial ruins of the already ancient city as an annual pilgrimage. Because of the importance

165 Taube, “Flower Mountain,” 79. 166 Fitzsimmons, 49. 167 Taube, “Flower Mountain,” 78. 168 Brian Stross, “Seven Ingredients in Mesoamerican Ensoulment: Dedication and Termination in Tenejapa,” in The Sowing and the Dawning: Termination, Dedication, and Transformation in the Archaeological and Ethnographic Record of Mesoamerica, ed. Shirley Boteler Mock (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1998), 32.

placed on visiting the ancient city, Aztec culture, religion, and tradition are thought to be heavily influenced if not rooted in Teotihuacan. One noteworthy Late Postclassic Aztec narrative recorded in both the Florentine Codex and in the Leyenda de los soles, records Teotihuacan as the place where the gods performed the act of self-sacrifice to create the sun. This sacrificial act created the sun, whose solar powers transform seeds and plants in the vital realm of agriculture.169 Concepts of death as a transformation of bodies into things powerful and restorative is exemplified in the sun’s origin story and can be applied to potential understandings of ancestors and human death.

Mixtec ruling families held power based on their ancestry, believing their first ancestors emerged from sacred trees or openings in the earth.170 These ancient founders of the ruling lineages, who emerged from the very land ruled by their offspring, rooted and grounded their dynasties as the literal connection to the earth. Though the rulers were not themselves divine, they shared the titles of iya and iyadzehe (“lord” and “lady”), which were also used for deities.171

The histories of these lineages make appearances in the codices.

The Codex Vienna tells the story and deeds of 9 Wind, a Mixtec cultural hero. One episode details 9 Wind’s interaction with twelve spirits of earth and vegetation, along with two priests, which ultimately results in the tree birth event (Figure 18). The priests, in this image, face the tree in profile, just after splitting the tree down the middle to release a male figure, a female figure, and fifty-one other Mixtec lineage ancestors. Note the similarity in the symmetrical approach to the priest figures and the tree in this image and in the composition of the Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural (Figure 1). The location of the tree birth has been identified as

169 Nielsen and Helmke, 78. 170 Elizabeth Hill Boone, Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), 19. 171 Boone, Stories in Red and Black, 88.

Apoala; this place of origin has been confirmed by chroniclers Antonio de los Reyes Francisco de Burgoa as the place the Mixtec lords’ ancestors emerged from a tree or trees.172 The ancestral figures, except for the two who are emerging or just emerged from the tree, are shown in the fetal position, in profile, with one finger pointed and each identifying date-name right by nearly every individual. Notice the similarities in the presentation of the ancestral man who emerges from the tree in the Codex Vienna page and the presentation of the ancestors on Pakal’s sarcophagus

(Figure 15). Both are shown with shoulders square to the viewer with face in profile, with right hand half uplifted and left hand crossing the body. Each ancestral figure is shown emerging from a V-shaped opening in a natural feature: in the Maya sarcophagus, the earth itself and, in the Mixtec manuscript, a sacred tree. Both examples show ancestors in association with the earth and the realm of life-sustaining plants.

Prominent floral imagery in the Tepantitla Mural at Teotihuacan begs questions of the widespread “Floral Paradise” concept in Mesoamerican cultures. Karl Taube cites both historic and contemporary examples of people with cultural ideas of floral afterlives, including the Aztec,

Huichol, Tarahumara, Maya, Yaqui, as well as the Hopi and Tohono O’odham in the American

Southwest. Contemporary Yucatec beliefs hold that Maya ancestors consumed the aroma of flowers.173 Classic Maya texts express life through breath, and Zinacanteco use the ritual smoking of incense and flowers in conjunction with music to contact supernatural beings.174 The mixture of floral motifs, a tree of origin, a frontal facing figure, mixed with its visual similarities to incense burners all beg to be considered within relationship to depictions of ancestors in

172 Boone, Stories in Red and Black, 94. 173 Taube, “Flower Mountain,” 69. 174 Evon Z. Vogt, Zinacantan: A Maya Community in the Highlands of Chiapas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), 403.

Mesoamerican art, as well as in relationship to known practices of ancestor worship and veneration.

CHAPTER VII

DOMAINS OF ANCESTORS IN THE MESOAMERICAN WORLDVIEW

In contrast to gods, origin stories are important to understanding the roles of ancestors in

Mesoamerican cosmologies. The origin and emergence stories I will discuss relate directly to the focus of my thesis: the importance of ancestor veneration in relationship to the Tepantitla

Patio 2 fresco mural. Common themes in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest include the likening of maize to humankind, the emergence of people from watery caves, the transformation of these people from fish-like states of being, and the coupling of ancestors in male/female pairs.

Because corn kernels, a cave opening, a central tree, agricultural motifs, and a cleft mountain appear in the Tepantitla Patio 2 murals, I will discuss these elements in Mesoamerican ancestral mythology. Here I “cast a wide net,” as it were, exploring ancestral representations across several Mesoamerican cultures, focusing on the beliefs and religious assumptions informing their art works and associated ritual practices. Though some imagery is approached in this chapter, I mainly rely upon anthropological sources to interpret their significance within specific cultural worldviews, both past and present. Several examples from the American Southwest serve as evidence for the geographical spread of such cohesive ideas about ancestor veneration and their analogous relationships ideologically to seeds and agriculture.

Evidence of ancient Mesoamerica’s relationship with the American Southwest can be found in the archaeological record, in shared agricultural technologies, as well as in similarities in, language, religious practices, and origin myths. Live macaws, cacao, and ocean shells from

Mesoamerica provide evidence of extensive trade routes between the American Southwest and

ancient Mesoamerica.175 The prominent agricultural technique of the strategic growing of maize

(corn), beans, and squash together, famously known in the Southwest as the “three sisters,” originated in Mesoamerica.176

The Hopi Tribe is a sovereign native nation located in northeastern Arizona.177

Descendents of the Ancient Puebloans, the Hopi speak a Uto-Aztecan language.178 Pueblo nations share some religious traditions in common with Mesoamerica, including hero twins, sacred bundles, the plumed serpent, and emergence narratives.179 Comparing Hopi architectural practices with those found at Teotihuacan may shed light on the uses of similarly structured spaces in ancient Teotihuacan. Through the discussion of Hopi architecture of ritual space and the ideology behind it, I hope to better understand the use of similar architectural spaces found in the apartment complexes of Teotihuacan, such as Tepantitla, where the mural is located.

Sipapu is the Hopi word for a small hole in the floor of a kiva, the traditional ceremonial structure of the Puebloans. These structures are still in use today. The sipapu, which is sometimes just a small indentation in the floor, is considered the most sacred area of the ceremonial chamber. Archaeologist Frank H. H. Roberts wrote that the sipapu “symbolizes the opening through which the gods first emerged when coming up from the under to the outer world and the aperture through which their spirits must return when they go to join the ancestors.”180

This architectural feature, analogies of which also exist in in Mesoamerican shrines, served as a

175 Karl A. Taube, "The Teotihuacan Cave of Origin: The Iconography and Architecture of Emergence Mythology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest," RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics no. 12 (1986): 71. 176 Taube, “The Teotihuacan Cave of Origin,” 71. 177 The Hopi Tribe Official Website. https://www.hopi-nsn.gov (11/12/2018). 178 Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica. “Hopi” in The Encyclopedia Britannica, 2016. 179 Jesse Walter Fewkes, “A Theatrical Performance at Walpi,” Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences 2 (1900): 605-29. 180 Frank H. H. Roberts Jr., “The Village of the Great Kivas on the Zuni Reservation, New Mexico,” Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, no. 111 (1932): 57.

location where one could petition gods and ancestors.181 Patio shrines in residential Teotihuacan follow this design, supporting the idea that patio murals were a vital element in these rituals. In fact, the small patio altars found in Teotihuacan, in line with the orientation of the Hopi’s small pits or sipapus, bear great resemblance to the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan and the tunnel dug underneath it.182

The Late Postclassic Aztecs looked to antiquity, specifically towards Teotihuacan, when retelling their own past.183 Before the present era of humans, the world experienced four “suns,” or eras. The contemporary cultures of Navajo, the Pueblo of Zuni, and Keres have four underworlds, analogous with Aztec four previous suns.184 The Aztecs recorded that the last sun or creation was inhabited by fish-like people. The fish people emerged into the present sun and were transformed into the first humans of this sun, becoming the ancestors of the era that they, and we also, presently inhabit. Fish thus are a common symbol of fertility in Mesoamerica.185

The Mixtec Nochixtlan Vase (Figure 19) contains a mountain (lower right detail in drawing) that shares common elements with the central figure in the upper register of the

Tepantitla Patio 2 mural. The structure of the mountain, cave, and Cosmic Tree illustration from the Nochixtlan Vase have been interpreted as a diagram for depicting the Mixtec emergence story, where a cave opened and the wealth of the world emanated.186 The tree at the top of the mountain on the Nochistlan Vase looks very similar to the bulging trees from the Mixtec “tree- birth” ancestral emergence scenes (Figure 18). Javier Urcid interpreted this vessel as a narrative

181 Taube, “The Teotihuacan Cave of Origin,” 76. 182 Laurette Séjourné, El Lenguaje de las Formas en Teotihuacan. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City (1966), 167-68. 183 Nielsen and Helmke, 78. 184 Taube, “The Teotihuacan Cave of Origin,” 72. 185 Taube, “The Teotihuacan Cave of Origin,” 76. 186 Alfredo López Austin, “Quetzalcóatl Desdoblado: Religión Mesoamericana y cerámica Mixteca,” Usos, Apropiaciones y Desviaciones de la Imagen en México, (Mexico City: CEMCA-UNAM November 1998), 11.

of creation, layered with allegorical and chronological time created for the event of a political marriage.187

Codex Vienna Obverse 38c-37abc depicts the creation of mankind, where a basin filled with water sprouts a bulging tree, whose base is demarcated as a huehuetl drum.188 The Codex

Vaticanus A account tells of the flood ending the Sun (era) of water, where ancestors escaped through a cave and an ahuehuetl tree.189 This tree, identified as Taxodium mucronatum, a

Montezuma Cypress, is called ahuehuete in Nahuatl. The word āhuēhuētl translates to "upright drum in water" or "old man of the water."190 The link between ancestors, trees, waters, and a cave of origin converge in the Nochistlan Vase composition in a similar structure to the

Tepantitla Patio 2 murals. Like the Tepantitla Patio Murals (Image 1), the mountain pictured splits into a cleft peak. This mountain, identified as Collucan, was well known as a place of origin.191 “Collucan” translates to “place of those who have ancestors or grandfathers.”

Newer understandings of Zapotec religious practice reveal the importance of ancestors in their cosmology. Previously, the Spanish Priests who wrote early written records of Zapotec religion understand the importance of ancestor worship in the cultural context. However, the priests often misinterpreted deified rulers and ancestors as gods, relating religious structures to the ancient Greek pantheon model with which they were familiar through their Classical training.192 In fact, in Zapotec ethnohistoric sources, the term “idol” often refers directly to a

187 Javier Urcid, “Mythical Past and Historied Present: Another Interpretation of a Polychrome Vessel from Nochixtlan, Oaxaca,” Signs and Society 2, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 127-128. 188 Boone, Stories in Red and Black 94-95. Fig 51. 189 Taube, “The Teotihuacan Cave of Origin,” 65. 190 James Richard Andrews, Introduction to Classical Nahuatl. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 328. 191 Doris Heyden, “Caves, Gods, and Myths: World View and Planning at Teotihuacan.” In Mesoamerican Sites and World Views, ed. Elizabeth Benson (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 1981), 15. 192 Joyce Marcus. "Archaeology and Religion: A Comparison of the Zapotec and Maya," World Archaeology 10, no. 2 (1978): 174.

material manifestation of an ancestor.193 Modern anthropologists use the concept of animism to better describe Zapotec understandings of the world and the forces that rule it.194 The Zapotec held ancestors in high regard and considered them participants in the community despite their altered state of being.195 The ancestors were able to intervene supernaturally on behalf of the living; thus strong healthy relationships with these ancestors were helpful if not essentially vital for the living. Supernatural interventions of the ancestors met the earth through energy, often in the forms of lightning.196 As is the case in most societies, politics played a major role in religious practices. Zapotec royal ancestors were especially important to worship and venerate, and were sacrificed to like gods.197

The Zapotec constructed temples and memorial buildings over the tombs of important elite or royal ancestors. These structures later lent themselves to misinterpretation by the

Spanish, who assumed the images of ancestors were images of gods, and labeled them “idols.”198

This misinterpretation is made clear in the frequent names recorded of the “deities”: coqui is interpreted male ruler, coquihualao as prince, and xonaxi as female ruler.199 Further proof of this misconception, Spanish records show calendar names as the names of deities. The Zapotec used calendar names for mortal humans, not for deities.200 The lists of so-called “gods” bears almost

193 McAnany, Living with the Ancestors, 27. 194 R. H. Lowie, Primitive Religion (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924), 133. 195 Marcus, “Archaeology and Religion,” 175. 196 Joyce Marcus, “Zapotec Culture and Religion,” in Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 2001), 847. 197 Kent V. Flannery and Joyce Marcus, “Evolution of the Public Building in Formative Oaxaca,” in Cultural Change and Continuity: Essays in Honour of James Bennett Griffin, ed. Charles C. Cleland (New York: Academic Press, 1976), 381. 198 Flannery and Marcus, 381. 199 Marcus, “Archaeology and Religion,” 175. 200 Marcus, “Archaeology and Religion,” 176.

no overlap from town to town, which one would expect if each community was instead worshipping their own deceased ancestors.201

The Zapotec expressed the veneration of ancestors through monuments and tombs stacked one on top of another, eventually creating platform structures.202 At Monte Alban, many of the burials consist of a male-female pair of skeletons on each level of the burials. These sets are thought of as ancestor pairs.203 Ideas of ancestors becoming both or neither specific sex exist in Mesoamerican cultural ideas, and the presence of ancestor mounds containing sets of male and female skeletons could support this idea.204 Art associated with elite burials included jade earplugs, ornaments, and bracelets.205 Funerary offerings such as serving vessels, incense burners, and ceramic effigy figures inside tombs used in rituals survive as the remnants of these continuous ancestor veneration practices. Interring the dead beneath their own living space, the living kept the ancestors close for help and veneration.

Smoke was paramount to the Maya in contexts of communication and transformation.

Effigy censers were a key component for Maya ancestral ritual practice, as they were considered

“the living representations of the ancestors and conduits of divine inspiration.”206 The smoke emitted from the censers became the vehicle for transformation and communication. Fragrant

201 Marcus, “Zapotec Culture and Religion,” 847. 202 Javier Urcid, Zapotec Writing: Knowledge, Power, and Memory in Ancient Oaxaca. Boston, MA: Brandeis University. May 2005. http://www.famsi.org/zapotecwriting/ 203 Urcid, Zapotec Writing: Knowledge, Power, and Memory, 33. 204 Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 2: The Ceremonies, trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, Monographs of the School of American Research and University of Utah Press, no. 14 pt. 3 (Santa Fe: School of American Research and University of Utah Press, 1951), Ch. 37. 205 Javier Urcid, “Zapotec Mortuary Practices,” in Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia, ed. Susan Toby Evans and David L. Webster (New York: ,arland, 2001), 847. 206 Prudence M. Rice, "Rethinking Classic Lowland Maya Pottery Censers." Ancient Mesoamerica 10, no. 1 (1999): 41.

smoke burned as “an ethereal and ephemeral substance suitable for divine appetites.”207 Fire offerings transformed food or incense into smoke, converting it from solid physical substances to vapors that rose upward toward the realm of the ancestors.208 This transformation allowed the individuals inhaling the incense to symbolically enter the presence of the conjured being.209 In the sixteenth century, the domestic ancestral representations belonging to the Maya, according to

Spanish bishop and chronicler Diego de Landa, were “the most important part of the inherited property.”210

Parallels between human life cycles and the cycles of agriculture are paramount across broader Mesoamerican worldviews. In Mesoamerica the life and cycles of humans are analogous to that of plants, specifically agricultural varieties.211 For the Classic Maya, maize was the stuff from which the first humans were made.212 In the Codex Borgia, Tlaloc created people from corn and blood.213 The slash and burn approach to cultivating maize includes a cycle of planting, growing, dying, burning, replanting, and rebirth. Thus, the birth, life, death, cremation, burial or interment (in the earth, cave, or structure) of humans leads to the next natural step in the cycle: rebirth. The certainty of seasons, the sun, and the interaction of the sun and cosmos at large with the natural world confirmed the place of humans within this cyclical order.214

207 Andrew K. Scherer and Stephen Houston, “Blood, Fire, Death: Covenants and Crises among the Classic Maya,” in Smoke, Flames, and the Human Body in Mesoamerican Ritual Practice, ed. Vera Tiesler and Andrew K. Scherer (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 2018), 110. 208 Taube, “Structure 10L-16 and its Early Antecedents,” 268. 209 Stephen Houston and Karl Taube, “An Archaeology of the Senses: Perception and Cultural Expression in Ancient America,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10 no. 2 (2000): 263. 210 Alfred M. Tozzer, Landa’s Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán: A Translation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941), 111. 211 Palka, 289. 212 Taube, “The Teotihuacan Cave of Origin,” 76. 213 Gisele Diaz and Alan Rogers, ed. The Codex Borgia: A Full-Color Restoration of the Ancient Mexican Manuscript (Mineola: Dover, 1993), 37-38. 214 Palka, 289.

The presentation of the Classic Maya king K’inich Janaab Pakal in his tomb at Palenque as both the Maize God and a metaphorical kernel of corn is one example of Mesoamerican concepts of ancestors as seeds or, in this case, a kernel of maize (Figure 14) .215 The ancestors sprouting from the ground as personified plants on the sides of his sarcophagus present another case advocating for ancestors as seeds or agricultural plants (Figure 15). In this case, they fulfill their regenerative potential to sprout up again from the earth in the organizational likeness to an orchard, which can also be seen as a metaphor for inheriting political power.216

The link between humankind, maize, and the afterlife is exemplified in the frequency of corn imagery, new growth, and personified plants represented in Maya houses of the dead.217

The creation narrative of the K’iche’ Maya people of Guatemala is recorded in the Popol Vuh, an oral narrative put into writing around 1550 CE. The Popol Vuh uses human bones, especially skulls, to represent seeds throughout.218 Even the tree birth recorded in the Mixtec Codex Vienna

(Figure 18) bears agricultural connotations, as the ancestors and lineage founders themselves originate from a tree. Such associations of ancestors with seeds and life giving agricultural plants are still alive in may Maya communities. For the contemporary Tzotzil Maya in southern

Mexico, maize has an inner soul, called ch’uhlel, in the ear and in the center of each kernel.219

The K’iche’ Maya of Chichicastenango, Guatemala hold similar beliefs regarding inner kernel souls.220 Ancestral shrines constructed by the K’iche’ further link ancestors to both land and resources, as their lineages were closely identified with the land tracts in which “sacred spots

215 Fitzsimmons, 126. 216 McAnany, Living with the Ancestors, 75. 217 Fitzsimmons, 18. 218 Allen J. Christenson, Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 129. 219 Vogt, 35. 220 Ruth Bunzel, Chichicastenango: A Guatemalan Village, Publication 22 (Seattle: American Ethnological Society, University of Washington Press, 1952), 54.

where alters are built, the most important of which are the warabal ja’ (‘sleeping house’) for the ancestors.”221

Veneration of ancestors in Mesoamerica reinforces transgenerational social and economic differences, even into the present era.222 Various forms of ancestor veneration culminate throughout the region into the widespread Catholic feasts of All Saints and All Souls, where the dead are remembered, given offerings, and addressed through prayer. The Ixil Maya of

Guatemala pray not only to their immediate forebears, but also to the departed souls of town leaders, native town priests, calendar priests, and others.223 The Tlaxcalans of Mount Malintzi, who are modern Nahua people, believe that a female mountain spirit stores rain, hail, seeds, and fruit within a cave. The Tlaxcalans build shrines with offerings on top of mountains, petitioning the dead for rain and maize.224 Klein noted the similarity between these modern beliefs and the mountain-cave aspects of the frontally facing figure in the Tepantitla mural.225 Following ancient Prehispanic traditions, stories of the “old people of the clouds” circulate around Juchitan,

Oaxaca. Words for these are binigulaza, binnigola, and binizaa. Finding ancient artefacts used by their ancestors are considered gifts of treasure that the binizaa provided for them to discover again.226

221 Robert M. Carmack, The Quiche Mayas of Utatlan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981), 161. 222 Patricia A. McAnany, “Ancestor Veneration” In Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia, ed. Susan Toby Evans and David L. Webster (New York: Garland, 2001), 20. 223 Benjamin N. Colby, “The Anomalous Ixil--Bypassed by the Postclassic?” American Antiquity 41 no. 1 (1976): 75. 224 Ralph Leon Beals, “Ethnology of the Western Mixe,” University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 42 (1969): 98. 225 Klein, 149. 226 W. C. Cruz, “Los Binigulaza,” Neza. Ano II (Mexico City: Órgano Mensual de la Sociedad Nueva de Estudiantes Juchitecos, 1936).

Within Mesoamerican ritual, ancestors are seen as empowering forces of life.227 For

Maya royal lineages, ancestors serve as the generators not only of life but also of political power.

As beings honored and prayed to in domestic settings, familial ancestors serve as conduits for blessings and assistance, specifically for rain and maize. The presence of ancestor imagery, especially scenes of veneration, serve as proof of their ultimate importance within political and domestic affairs. The continued importance and relevance of ancestors within the modern context advocates for the strength of these oral traditions.

227 McAnany, Living with the Ancestors, 29.

CHAPTER VIII

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

A. Gender

By reading the central icon of the Tepantitla Patio 2 mural as an ancestral representation, this investigation diverges from previous studies which tend to see it as a deity. Among the most important implications of this new suggestion relates to the understanding of the gender of the depicted figure. When approaching the idea of gender, it is important to note the lack of consistency in discussions of this concept at Teotihuacan.228 Because monumental sculptures and other representations typically feature anthropomorphic figures in elaborate dress, it is nearly impossible to “sex” these figures by bodily features (primary or secondary traits) alone.

However, before discussing the presence of biological “sex,” I must make clear my use of certain vocabulary. “Sex” refers to the biological interpretation of male and female in the tradition of

Western science, and “gender” refers to the social construct that dictates the roles and actions of members of each gender. An awareness of the Western bias towards a gender binary of male and female determined by biological “sex,” should also be taken account when approaching identities within Native American cultures. In fact, within the discipline of American pre-Columbian studies, “No particular relationship between gender constructs and biological characteristics can be presumed a priori.”229 The awareness that not all cultures partake in the Western construct of a biologically determined gender binary pattern should be present when discussing cultures

228 Mandell, 29. 229 Rosemary A. Joyce, “Images of Gender and Labor Organization in Classic Maya Society,” in Exploring Gender through Archaeology: Selected Papers from the 1991 Conference, ed. Cheryl Claassen and Mary Carolyn Beaudry, Monographs in World Archaeology No. 11 (Madison: Prehistory Press, 1992), 63–70.

which may have interpreted gender as a role which an individual fulfils through action, not a biologically determined status.230

In interpreting Teotihuacan’s “Water Goddess” monolith, some scholars have taken an approach similar to my take with regard to the Tepantitla Mural. Both of these approaches see a figure mirroring or personifying a sacred or holy mountain. Now housed at the Museo Nacional de Antropologia, the “Water Goddess” statue stands nearly four meters tall and is the largest extant monument known at Teotihuacan.231 Annabeth Headrick points out visual similarities between the notched peak visible in the ridgeline of Cerro Gordo and the notch in the top of the

“Water Goddess” monolith’s headpiece.232 The similarities in the relationships between this stone “Water Goddess” and the mountain Cerro Gordo and the central figure in the Tepantitla

Patio 2 Mural and the mountain in the lower panel of the patio mural are hard to ignore.233

Caves and mountains as points of origin in Mesoamerican tradition support this ancestor- mountain conceptual equalization. The concept of a “Mother of Stone” also supports the idea of the mountain as an originator of life, or ancestor.

As discussed briefly in the analysis and discussion of the visual aspects of the Tepantitla

Patio 2 Mural, the garments of the central figure, specifically the upper garment or quechquemitl suggest a feminine identity for the central figure, as originally argued by Kubler. Whether this figure is wearing a woman’s skirt beneath is a bit hard to determine, as the bottom of the figure gives way to a cave-like opening, and waves of water and agricultural symbolism. Both the feminine clothing elements and the cave opening add to an interpretation of the figure in relation to the themes of emergence and origin. Mesoamerican cultures like the Maya and the Mexica

230 Gilbert Herdt, “Introduction: Third Sexes and Third Genders,” in Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History (New York: Zone Books, 1994), 53. 231 Robb, “The Water Goddess,” 154. 232 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 35. 233 Headrick, “Gardening with the Great Goddess at Teotihuacan,” 97.

honor specific named ancestors, in many instances, both female and male, in their art. To use

Aztec concepts of gender as a lens through which to consider Teotihuacan gender constructs, we may look at their view of gender as a process of becoming and less of a designated role one is born with and and always possesses. Gender and adulthood for the Aztecs were not natural consequences of hormones or aging, rather, they were achieved through cultural processes.234

Gender was more about the actions and roles of working adults; therefore the very young and very old who were not contributing or acting out their gender roles were seen as having unmarked gender statuses. Relating this back to the central figure of Tepantitla’s fresco mural, the feminine yet ambiguous dress and presentation may be intentional to present the figure as an ancestor. This figure would have passed from the active, dyadic gendered roles of the living into the phase of a gender-ambiguous or indeterminate ancestor.

Looking beyond the body and dress of the central figure, gender-related symbolism extends into the spiders and butterflies depicted along the tree branches of the Tepantitla Patio 2

Mural. In Aztec tradition, the souls of warriors slain in battle ascend to a floral paradise in the forms of butterflies, drinking nectar without a care in the world.235 Annabeth Headrick cites the similarities in the presentation of atlatls (weapons) and butterflies, advocating for this closely related butterfly-warrior symbolism in Teotihuacan.236 In Mesoamerican iconography, spiders are associated with the art and production of textile making--the traditional practice of women in the labor division of ancient Mesoamerica.237 While the presentation of two distinctive tree branches insists a distinct binary and promotes a gendered division of labor, the balance and

234 See Sahagún. 235 Helmke and Nielsen, 134. 236 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 130. 237 June Nash, “Gendered Deities and the Survival of Culture,” History of Religions 36, no. 4 (1997): 336-37.

interconnectivity of the two branches into one larger entity relates to the Mesoamerican tradition of coupling ancestral pairs together, both in ritual art and in funerary context.

Ancestors, as discussed over a breadth of time and space, served as important links to the inherited fruit of power (as seen in Maya ancestral orchards), as influences on the the falling of rain and the production of maize (seen in modern and ancient contexts), and as forces relevant in everyday ritual activities (as seen in domestic shrine contexts). For the Maya, ancestral lineages legitimized inherited rulership, and Aztec/Nahua and Mixtec histories of their ancestors reinforced cultural identities. Scholars have proposed that in Teotihuacan, the apartment complexes likely fell outside of heavily state monitoring.238 In all cases discussed, ancestors served as a key binding element in group identity, as well as a vital force in keeping healthy crops and food supplies.

B. Political Power

The topic of rulership has been a persistent problem for scholars of Teotihuacan, as images known to be rulers have not been established in Teotihuacan’s art, unlike the Maya, who clearly depicted and named their rulers on stelae and other monuments and portable objects.239 It is likely, however, that Teotihuacan did have images or symbols understood by the citizens as representations of their rulers, at least early in its history. The monumental structures of

Teotihuacan’s public sphere clearly required advanced engineering along with a huge and well organized workforce. Cowgill proposed that the patronage of powerful individual rulers led to the creation of the three large “pyramid” structures of Teotihuacan, with the Feathered Serpent

238 Clayton; Cowgill, Ancient Teotihuacan, 270. 239 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 23.

Pyramid marking the end of consolidated personal rule.240 The Feathered Serpent Pyramid structure and its surrounding Ciudadela were constructed around 200 CE, thus predating the

Tepantitla murals by at least a few hundred years.241 Cowgill’s assumption that the Feathered

Serpent Pyramid marked the end of rulership by a single powerful individual adds to evidence against an interpretation of Tepantitla’s mural as a depiction of a ruler.

The great public works of Teotihuacan clearly serve as proof proof for a powerful centralized government; however scholars have yet to see evidence of this central control extend into the living spaces of individuals. The art and architecture of Teotihuacan’s public sphere promoted state unity through a homogenized style and included depictions of deities of a “state religion.” Though interpretations have been made associating this figure with a “Water

Goddess,” “Great Goddess,” or even “Tlaloc,” scholarship has emerged arguing that this central figure cannot be clearly identified as one of these deities.242 As mentioned earlier, scholars such as Headrick have even proposed that the separate aspects of ancestral rites outside of the state sanctioned religions may have even posed a threat to the homogeneity of Teotihuacan's central government.243 Repeatedly, other aspects of Teotihuacan’s art objects from domestic contexts have been closely associated with ancestral veneration and rites for the dead, so why should this mural be an exception?244

240 George Cowgill, “Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology: Beyond Criticizing New Archaeology,” American Anthropologist 95 (1993), 567. 241 Sugiyama, “The Feathered Serpent Pyramid at Teotihuacan,” 58. 242 Mandell, 45; Zoltán Paulinyi, “The ‘Great Goddess’ of Teotihuacan: Fiction or Reality?” Ancient Mesoamerica 17 (2006): 14; Taube, Karl A. “La religion à Teotihuacan,” in Teotihuacan: Cite des Dieux: En hommage à Felipe Solís (1944-2009), ed. Felipe R. Solís Olguín, Musée du quai Branly, Museum Rietberg, and Martin-Gropius-Bau (Paris: Musee du Quai Branly, 2009), 157. 243 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 49. 244 George Kubler, The Art and Architecture of Ancient America, 3rd edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 62; Cowgill, Ancient Teotihuacan, 330; Taube, “The Teotihuacan Spider Woman,” 138; Young-Sanchez, 328.

C. Teotihuacan Worldview

The consistent use of residential patios as a burial locations throughout the history of

Teotihuacan implies that the rituals conducted in these patios likely included or revolved around ancestor veneration.245 An ancestral interpretation for the Tepantitla mural is consistent with the body of scholarship stating that the apartment complexes, specifically the patios, served as important spaces revolving around ancestor veneration.246 “Principle patios, then, emerge as an important location of ancestor veneration in the city of Teotihuacan,” Headrick stated in 2007, noting that, “the ancestral dead buried in those patios functioned as mediators between the living and the gods.”247 The archaeological record informs these conclusions in the burials and offerings underneath the floors of apartment rooms and patios. Such practices suggest that inhabitants of these spaces preserved access to their ancestors, presumably as a critical component of their identities and as socio-political currency.248

In a culture that practiced ancestral veneration such as Teotihuacan, the borders between humans and deities were not absolutely distinct. While the feathered headdress, masks, and nose plaque, along with the similar height of the side figures point to the depiction of an actual human leader or at least a dressed human, the domestic setting of this mural does not imply a political theme or ruler portrait. The abundance of ceramic censers in the domestic apartment complexes of Teotihuacan supports the tradition of private ancestral worship as an important aspect of religion. Ancestral cults existed within the state religion, which honored the more specific and

245 Jose Ignacio Sánchez Alaniz, “Unidades habitacionales del periodo clásico,” in Teotihuacán 1980-1982: Nuevas interpretaciones ed. Rubén Cabrera Castro, Ignacio Rodríguez García, and Noel Morelos García, (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1991), 173. 246 Sánchez Alaniz, “Unidades habitacionales del perodo clásico,” 173; Evelyn Childs Rattray, The Teotihuacan Burials and Offerings: A Commentary and Inventory (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Publications in Anthropology, 1992), 78; George L. Cowgill, “Teotihuacan: Cosmic Glories and Mundane Needs,” in The Social Construction of Ancient Cities, ed. Monica L. Smith (Washington and London: Smithsonian Books, 2003), 42. 247 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 49. 248 Cowgill, “Teotihuacan: Cosmic Glories and Mundane Needs,” 42.

widely recognized deities like the Water Goddess, the Old Fire God, and the Storm God.249

Imbuing qualities of such deities into the depiction of ancestors may have facilitated their presumed function as intermediaries for prayers, similar to saints in Roman Catholicism.

As previously discussed, butterflies are thought of in Aztec culture as the souls of warriors killed in battle. While the “Tlalocan” interpretation for the lower register may be erroneous, the depiction of water imagery, abundance, and fertility should not be discounted.

This work could represent the space of the “florid paradise” described as the afterlife awaiting those who died in battle or childbirth.250 If not a separate realm from Teotihuacan and the living, the irrigated fields of Teotihuacan are depicted as receiving water and abundance from a personified mountain in return for proper veneration and respect from the collective people.251 If the lower register does not depict the afterlife, the butterflies and spiders on the tree still suggest an association with the dead, or the summoned presence of an ancestral spirit. The central figure as an ancestor also embodies this connection between deceased and living, personified along the axis mundi.

Rites and prayers directed at ancestors and the dead in Mesoamerica repeatedly request rain needed for abundant harvest. Buying into the validity of ancestors seen conceptually as seeds or maize and their associations with mountains and caves filled with kernels, this central

Tepantitla figure, which encompases all of these elements, can be seen as the “sprouted” or fully realized role of an ancestor in Mesoamerican belief. The burial of ancestors beneath the patio floors at Teotihuacan serve as the “planting” of the ancestral seed. The incense burners, shaped like the bundled and adorned dead, are seeds in this ancestral continuum. If given enough

249 Young-Sanchez, 328. 250 Helmke and Nielsen, 134. 251 Headrick, The Teotihuacan Trinity, 16.

“water” and proper care, one expects a seed to sprout. “Watering” the seeds equates to rituals showering ancestors with burnt offerings and prayers. The next stage, the “sprouting” of the ancestor-seeds, is exemplified in the Maya example of Pakal’s “ancestral orchard.” It is also seen in full climax in the Tepantitla figure, out from whom sprouts the world tree, and whose outstretched hands spout forth water onto the soil, sprouting up life-giving agricultural fruits for the preservation of the generations.

Figures

Figure 1. Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural, Teotihuacan, Mexico. Fresco. Reproduction in the Museo Nacional de Antropología, México. Markman and Markman (1989: color plate 4)

Figure 2. Map of Teotihuacan. After Millon et al. (1973).

Figure 3. Incensario 200-350 CE. Ceramic 28 ⅝ x 13 ¾ x 13 in. La Ventilla, Teotihuacan. Zona de Monumentos Arqueológicos de Teotihuacan / INAH. After Robb et al. (2017:367, cat. 144).

Figure 4. Incensario 350-450 CE. Ceramic, mica, and mineral pigments. 26 ½ x 17 ⅜ x 9 ½ in. Teotihuacan, Mexico. Zona de Monumentos Arqueológicos de Teotihuacan / INAH. After Robb et al. (2017: 380, Figure 159).

Figure 5. Incensario Lid 350-550 CE. 16 ⅛ x 5 ⅛ in. Teotihuacan, Mexico. Zona de Monumentos Arqueológicos de Teotihuacan / INAH, 10-411039. After Robb et al. (2017: cat. 1).

Figure 6. Tepantitla Patio 2. Teotihuacan, Mexico. Photo by Uwe Duerr, 2014. https://www.uweduerr.com/teotihuacan/

Figure 7. Plan of Tepantitla Complex. Drawing by Beatriz de la Fuente, after de la Fuente (1995: 138).

Figure 8. Detail of Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural 2 (upper register), Teotihuacan, Mexico. Fresco. Photo by Uwe Duerr, 2014. https://www.uweduerr.com/teotihuacan/

Figure 9. Tepantitla Patio 2 Mural 3 (lower register), Teotihuacan, Mexico. Fresco. Photo by Uwe Duerr, 2014. https://www.uweduerr.com/teotihuacan/

Figure 9. Detail of flowering tree from Tepantitla Patio 2, Teotihuacan, Mexico. Drawing by Linda Schele. FAMSI Resources the Linda Schele Drawing Collection © 2000 David Schele. Schele:7310. http://research.famsi.org/uploads/schele/hires/10/IMG0061.jpg

Figure 10. Mirror Back 400-750 CE. Slate, pigments. Pacific Coast, Guatemala. 7 ⅞ in. Cleveland Museum of Art, James Albert and Mary Gardener Ford Memorial Fund, 1989.65. After Robb et al. (2017: cat. 30).

Figure 11. Nose Plaque, 200-250 CE. Greenstone 2 ½ x 3 ⅛ in. Teotihuacan, Mexico. Proyecto Templo de Quetzalcoatl, Teotihuacan Mapping Project. After Robb et al. (2017:263, cat. 60).

Figure 12. Mural detail, Tetitla Portico 11, ca. 350-550 CE. Fresco. Teotihuacan, Mexico. Photograph by Maria Teresa Uriarte, 1995. After Robb et al. (2017: Figure 25.6).

Figure 13. Offering scene on the mural of the “Temple of Agriculture,” Teotihuacan, Mexico. Drawing by Kumiko Sugiyama, after Miller et al. (1973: 63).

Figure 14. Drawing of the carving on the lid of K’inich Janaab Pakal I’s sarcophagus, ca. 683 CE. Palenque, Mexico. Drawing by Merle Greene Robertson, after Greene Robertson (1983: Figure 99).

Figure 15. Portrait and name glyphs of Ahkal Mo’ Nahb from side of Pakal’s sarcophagus. ca. 683 CE, Palenque, Mexico. Drawing by Merle Greene Robertson, after Greene Robertson (1983: Figure 189).

Figure 16. Lidded Tripod Vessel (“Dazzler”) 450-500 CE. Ceramic with stucco and pigment. 19.5 x 23.7 cm. Margarita Tomb, Structure 16, Copan, Honduras. IHAH, Centro Regional de Investigaciones Arqueológicas, Copán, Honduras.

Figure 17. Ancestor face in vessel cartouche with smoke vents, from facade of Rosalila Structure, Copan, Honduras. Stucco, Early Classic period. Detail of drawing by Barbara W. Fash, after Fasquelle (1997: Figure 7).

Figure 18. Codex Vienna (Also called “Codex Vindobonensis”) Obverse 38c-37abc. ca. 1320 CE. Facsimile from the British Museum. Am2006,Drg.226 https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx? partid=1&assetid=561025001&objectid=3179214

Figure 19. Nochixtlan Vase (Line drawing rollout), Nochixtlan, Oaxaca. Postclassic period. Drawing by Elbis Domínguez Covarrubias, after Urcid (2014: Figure 2).

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