7,000 Aztec Relics Tell a Grisly Story

The moon goddess believed, and rightly so, that a soon-to-be-born baby brother would prove a difficult rival for the attention of the humans who populated the dry, high valley. So she made plans to kill the newborn deity as it emerged from his mother’s womb.

To her surprise, however, Little Brother emerged not crawling on all fours but upright, fully grown and swinging a sword. A bloody battle ensued, and the moon goddess, Coyolxauhqui, was slain, her head and limbs sliced from a sagging torso. A new supreme god reigned--the bloodthirsty and warlike Huitzilopochtli.

For centuries, inhabitants of the valley--which today is the site of Mexico’s capital--celebrated the cosmic battle with cruel rituals. High atop massive pyramids, priests sacrificed prisoners and athletes to satisfy the blood lust of the war god.

The deposed Coyolxauhqui was relegated to the foot of the ceremonial pyramid, where an image of her dismembered body reminded worshipers of her defeat and, not incidentally, the triumph of the Aztecs, who conquered most of what is now Mexico and imposed the cult of Huitzilopochtli on their subjects.

Now, 500 years later, Coyolxauhqui, or at least her broken image, has made a comeback. A huge stone slab that bears a relief of the butchered goddess is the centerpiece of the new Templo Mayor Museum here. The modernistic exhibit hall displays artifacts from the adjacent Aztec Great Temple, which was discovered in 1981. The museum and ruins stand just a block from the Zocalo, Mexico City’s main plaza.

The Great Temple was actually the last of seven layers of pyramids constructed by the Aztecs before the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards. Each pyramid was built over the previous one according to a ritual schedule. The Aztecs merely covered the preceding pyramid with fill to form the base of a new structure, and older images and offerings were buried within each.

“Nothing was recycled,” said archeologist Roberto Rojas, an administrator of the museum. “Everything in each new temple had to be new. The old artifacts were just considered rubble.”

Thus each layer of the Templo Mayor Museum reveals treasures, not only from the last period of Aztec rule but also from centuries further back, when the tribe was just beginning to dominate the Valley of Mexico. In all, 7,000 objects have been found in the ruins.

The museum itself has been under construction for seven years; the opening, which took place last fall, was delayed by strikes and government budget problems that the Aztecs never had to deal with.

While the stone of Coyolxauhqui (pronounced co-yol-SHAO-key) is the leading attraction of the four-story museum, a wealth of other unique exhibits reveals the varied preoccupations of the cruel and powerful Aztecs.

One of those preoccupations was rain. The rain god Tlaloc is represented by masks, human-like figures and reliefs on kettles. The god of fire is represented by a grinning, seated stone figure curiously adorned with a hummingbird. Fertility amulets in the form of female figures are carved in stone, alabaster and jade.

All roads, and taxes, led to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. Tribute came in the form of grain, gold and jade. Craftsmanship itself could be a form of tribute, although the results were not always pleasing. Some of the stiffness of Aztec-era monumental carving is attributed to the less-than-enthusiastic work of conquered artisans.

The Aztecs’ aggressive nature is well reflected in the museum exhibits. Large earthen figures of winged warriors recall their love of war, as does the extensive collection of spears and mallets handy for bashing in the skulls of rivals.

As a warning to potential rebels, Aztec rulers often publicly displayed the skulls of their defeated foes. The museum, not shy about detailing certain unattractive features of Aztec rule, has mounted a set of old skulls on the traditional horizontal poles. The infamous practice of sacrificing victims by cutting into the chest and pulling out a beating heart is represented by a collection of flint sacrificial knives. Some of the victims were chosen from the winning teams of ball games said to have been played on an enclosed field buried somewhere nearby.

“Scores were notoriously low,” quipped archeologist Rojas.

The museum’s displays are laid out by topic, and visitors are asked to follow a particular route from beginning to end. Security guards direct wayward visitors back onto required paths. A lack of places to sit makes a visit somewhat tiring; it takes about two hours to get a good look at everything.

Lighting is dramatic, but in some cases the alternation of light and dark makes labels and explanations hard to read. In any case, most foreign visitors will need a bilingual guide; everything is written in Spanish.

“We are a young museum, and there will be changes,” assured Rojas, responding to travelers’ complaints about lighting and seating.

The building is an experiment in museum design, an attempt to add extra dimensions to the exhibits through imaginative layouts. For example, several life-size stone figures that once supported flags and torches in the Great Temple are displayed in the same position that they were found on the site. Instead of protecting the figures with panes of glass, the museum’s designers fashioned glass into steps in an attempt to replicate the staircase of the pyramid. Many offerings found in the temple are displayed on sand and gravel, just as they were first discovered on the dirt and fill of their original home.

Some of the building’s design reaches for the symbolic; a gash in a wall and a stream of reddish stones is supposed to represent the breaking of Aztec culture and the suffering that followed the Spanish conquest of 1521.

But the exhibits speak best for themselves. Among the last pieces on display are the bases of two massive columns from a Roman Catholic Church fashioned from even larger stones that bear the remnants of Aztec religious carving. There could hardly be better testimony to the conquest of one culture by another than the replacement of one set of beliefs for another.

Just ask Coyolxauhqui.