Coatepantli is a Nahuatl word meaning "wall of serpents". It comes from the words coatl meaning serpent [1] and tepantli meaning wall. [2] It is an architectural motif [3] found in archeological sites in Mesoamerica.
There is no consensus on the purpose of these walls. Many researchers have suggested that the coatepantli were used to mark the boundary between ceremonial and non-ceremonial land, [4] [5] and at times the word has been used to signify any wall which encloses a sacred space, notably in Tlatelolco. [3] Recent research disputes this and suggests that they varied in their nature, but they were not explicit boundaries between the sacred and the secular. [3]
Only three coatepantli are known to exist. [4] The oldest was constructed at the Tula site between 950 CE and 1200 CE. The Tenayuca and Tenochtitlán coatepantli were constructed around 1500 CE. [4] It is believed that the Tula coatepantli was the prototype for the others. [5] [6]
Aside from the location and date of their construction, these walls are distinct in their forms as well.
The 36-meter-long coatepantli of Tula depicts, in bas relief, serpents appearing to devour skeletal figures. [4] Some sources describe the figures as leaving the mouths of the snakes, and others describe them as being carried by the snakes. [7]
Originally the background and flesh of the skeletal figures was painted red. The serpents were painted either blue or yellow in an alternating pattern. The teeth of the serpents and the bones of the skeletal figure were white. [4] [8]
One interpretation of these carvings is that the snakes represent the earth consuming the dead or the need for human sacrifice to appease the gods. [5] Another theory asserts that the skeletons are representations of past kings or warriors and that the serpents, rather than being symbols of the earth, are rather markers of royalty. [7] Jorge R. Acosta, the discoverer of the coatepantli at Tula believed the skeletal figure was a representation of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, the Lord of the Dawn, who was often depicted with a skeletal face. [4] [8]
Analogs to the iconography found at Tula can also be found at Pre-Columbian Mayan sites such as Chichen Itza and Yaxchilan. [7]
The wall at Tenayuca is 170 meters long and features 138 sculpted rattle snakes on three sides of the base of the temple pyramid. [4] The snakes on the east and west side were painted green to represent the god of rain and fertility Tláloc. The snakes on the north side were painted red and black to represent the war god Huitzilopochtli. Similar to the coatepantli of Tula, the wall here is believed to be represent fire and regeneration. [9]
Based on second-hand accounts, the wall at Tenochtitlán was thought for many years to have enclosed the entirety of the sacred precinct of Tenochtitlán and consist of numerous snakes, [4] but archaeological work in 1981 revealed that the sacred precinct of the city extended beyond the coatepantli and that the coatepantli consisted of two walls in the form of large snakes with painted heads, surrounding the Templo Mayor. [3] [4] One snake was situated to the north of the temple and was painted blue to represent the rain god Tláloc. The other, around the southern side of the pyramid, was painted ochre and represented the war god Hitzilopochtli.
Tlaloc is the god of rain in Aztec religion. He was also a deity of earthly fertility and water, worshipped as a giver of life and sustenance. This came to be due to many rituals, and sacrifices that were held in his name. He was feared, but not maliciously, for his power over hail, thunder, lightning, and even rain. He is also associated with caves, springs, and mountains, most specifically the sacred mountain where he was believed to reside. Mount Tlaloc is very important in understanding how rituals surrounding this deity played out. His followers were one of the oldest and most universal in ancient Mexico.
A chacmool is a form of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican sculpture depicting a reclining figure with its head facing 90 degrees from the front, supporting itself on its elbows and supporting a bowl or a disk upon its stomach. These figures possibly symbolised slain warriors carrying offerings to the gods; the bowl upon the chest was used to hold sacrificial offerings, including pulque, tamales, tortillas, tobacco, turkeys, feathers, and incense. In Aztec examples, the receptacle is a cuauhxicalli. Chacmools were often associated with sacrificial stones or thrones. The chacmool form of sculpture first appeared around the 9th century AD in the Valley of Mexico and the northern Yucatán Peninsula.
The Toltec culture was a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican culture that ruled a state centered in Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico, during the Epiclassic and the early Post-Classic period of Mesoamerican chronology, reaching prominence from 950 to 1150 CE. The later Aztec culture considered the Toltec to be their intellectual and cultural predecessors and described Toltec culture emanating from Tōllān as the epitome of civilization. In the Nahuatl language the word Tōltēkatl (singular) or Tōltēkah (plural) came to take on the meaning "artisan". The Aztec oral and pictographic tradition also described the history of the Toltec Empire, giving lists of rulers and their exploits.
The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Aztec culture was organized into city-states (altepetl), some of which joined to form alliances, political confederations, or empires. The Aztec Empire was a confederation of three city-states established in 1427: Tenochtitlan, city-state of the Mexica or Tenochca, Texcoco, and Tlacopan, previously part of the Tepanec empire, whose dominant power was Azcapotzalco. Although, the term Aztecs is often narrowly restricted to the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, it is also broadly used to refer to Nahua polities or peoples of central Mexico in the prehispanic era, as well as the Spanish colonial era (1521–1821). The definitions of Aztec and Aztecs have long been the topic of scholarly discussion ever since German scientist Alexander von Humboldt established its common usage in the early 19th century.
Coatlicue, wife of Mixcōhuātl, also known as Tēteoh īnnān is the Aztec goddess who gave birth to the moon, stars, and Huītzilōpōchtli, the god of the sun and war. The goddesses Toci "our grandmother" and Cihuacōātl "snake woman", the patron of women who die in childbirth, were also seen as aspects of Cōātlīcue.
In Aztec religion, Coyolxāuhqui is a daughter of the priestess Cōātlīcue. She was the leader of her brothers, the Centzon Huitznahua. She led her brothers in an attack against their mother, Cōātlīcue, when they learned she was pregnant, convinced she dishonored them all. The attack is thwarted by Coyolxāuhqui's other brother, Huitzilopochtli, the national deity of the Mexicas.
Huitzilopochtli is the solar and war deity of sacrifice in Aztec religion. He was also the patron god of the Aztecs and their capital city, Tenochtitlan. He wielded Xiuhcoatl, the fire serpent, as a weapon, thus also associating Huitzilopochtli with fire.
Mixcoatl, or Camaxtle or Camaxtli, was the god of the hunt and identified with the Milky Way, the stars, and the heavens in several Mesoamerican cultures. He was the patron deity of the Otomi, the Chichimecs, and several groups that claimed descent from the Chichimecs. Under the name of Camaxtli, Mixcoatl was worshipped as the central deity of Huejotzingo and Tlaxcala.
Tenoch was a ruler of the Mexicas (Aztecas) during the fourteenth century during the Aztec travels from Aztlán to Tenochtitlan. Tenoch's father was Iztac Mixcoatl, who had a total of seven sons with two wives. The Tenochtitlan people were originally referred to as Tenochca, then the Mexica.
The Templo Mayor was the main temple of the Mexica people in their capital city of Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City. Its architectural style belongs to the late Postclassic period of Mesoamerica. The temple was called Huēyi Teōcalli in the Nahuatl language. It was dedicated simultaneously to Huitzilopochtli, god of war, and Tlaloc, god of rain and agriculture, each of which had a shrine at the top of the pyramid with separate staircases. The central spire was devoted to Quetzalcoatl in his form as the wind god, Ehecatl. The Great Temple devoted to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, measuring approximately 100 by 80 m at its base, dominated the Sacred Precinct. Construction of the first temple began sometime after 1325, and it was rebuilt six times. The temple was destroyed by the Spanish in 1521, and the Mexico City cathedral was built in its place.
The Aztec religion is a polytheistic and monistic pantheism in which the Nahua concept of teotl was construed as the supreme god Ometeotl, as well as a diverse pantheon of lesser gods and manifestations of nature. The popular religion tended to embrace the mythological and polytheistic aspects, and the Aztec Empire's state religion sponsored both the monism of the upper classes and the popular heterodoxies.
The Mexica were a Nahuatl-speaking people of the Valley of Mexico who were the rulers of the Mexica Empire. The Mexica established Tenochtitlan, a settlement on an island in Lake Texcoco, in 1325. A dissident group in Tenochtitlan separated and founded the settlement of Tlatelolco with its own dynastic lineage. In 1521, they were conquered by an alliance of Spanish conquistadors and indigenous people including the Tlaxcaltecs led by Hernán Cortés.
Tenayuca is a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican archaeological site in the Valley of Mexico. In the Postclassic period of Mesoamerican chronology, Tenayuca was a settlement on the former shoreline of the western arm of Lake Texcoco. It was located approximately 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) to the northwest of Tenochtitlan.
Tlatelolco is an archaeological excavation site in Mexico City, Mexico where remains of the pre-Columbian city-state of the same name have been found. It is centered on the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. On one side of the square is this excavated Tlatelolco site, on a second is the oldest European school of higher learning in the Americas called the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, and on the third stands a mid-20th-century modern office complex, formerly housing the Mexican Foreign Ministry, and since 2005 used as the Centro Cultural Universitario of UNAM.
Quetzalcoatl is a deity in Aztec culture and literature. Among the Aztecs, he was related to wind, Venus, Sun, merchants, arts, crafts, knowledge, and learning. He was also the patron god of the Aztec priesthood. He was one of several important gods in the Aztec pantheon, along with the gods Tlaloc, Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli. The two other gods represented by the planet Venus are Tlaloc and Xolotl.
In Aztec mythology, Creator-gods are the only four Tezcatlipocas, the children of the creator couple Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl "Lord and Lady of Duality", "Lord and Lady of the Near and the Close", "Father and Mother of the Gods", "Father and Mother of us all", who received the gift of the ability to create other living beings without childbearing. They reside atop a mythical thirteenth heaven Ilhuicatl-Omeyocan "the place of duality".
In Aztec mythology, Atlahua, Ahtlahua, Atlahoa, Atlavâ or Atlaua was a water God, fisherman and archer. There were said to be at least four ancient Aztec temples at which he was worshiped, the tallest supposedly being over 200 feet tall. The Aztecs prayed to him when there were deaths in water, such as when Hernando Cortez conquered Tenochtitlan, and the lake was said to be "floating with heads and corpses".
The Toltec Empire, Toltec Kingdom or Altepetl Tollan was a political entity in modern Mexico. It existed through the classic and post-classic periods of Mesoamerican chronology, but gained most of its power in the post-classic. During this time its sphere of influence reached as far away as the Yucatan Peninsula.
Xicalancatl, Xicallancatl or Xicalcoatl is one of the six giants sons of Mixcoatl and Tlaltecuhtli that populated the Earth after the Great Flood during the Fifth Sun in Aztec Mythology. The fourth son who settled on the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, in the region called Xicallanco, which confirms the abundance that there is in that region of such a vegetable product.
Surrounded the Earth by the seas and submerged in them for a long time, the old frog, with a thousand jaws and bloody tongues, and the strange name it takes, Tlaltecuhtli; Iztac-Mixcoatl, the fierce white cloud serpent, who lives in Citlalco, joins her in sweet collusion. And six tlacame with love engender; the six brothers on earth dwell and are the trunk of various races: the first-born, the giant Xelhua, of Itzocan and Epatlan, and Cuauquechollan, the cities he founded. Tenoch, the great Aztec claudillo, in Mexico stops the march of his people, and builds the great Tenochtitlan, a lake city. The strong Cuetlachoapan founds Ulmecatl, and gives its indolent people a seat. On the shores of the gulf, Xicalancatl, the brave Mixtecatl takes refuge. Of Mixtecapan in the sour lands; Otomitl, the xocoyotl, always lives in mountains near Mexico, and there it thrives in rich populations such as Tollan, Xilotepec and Otompan
{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)