Page 500 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

THE AZTEC EMPIRE: REALM OF THE SMOKING MIRROR

Michael D. Coe

I

Bernal Diaz del Castillo, one of
1566
In
like an
These are lengths of deerskin folded
Cortes' soldiers in the conquest of Mexico and Codex Borbonicus, all predate the conquest.
then an old man, set down his recollection accordion or screen, coated with white gesso,
of that November day in 1519 when he and his and painted with ritual and mythological scenes.
hard-bitten comrades had crossed the pass Although their exact provenance is still debated,
between the volcanoes flanking the eastern side these rarest of native American manuscripts
of the Valley of Mexico and beheld the heart of represent indigenous thought in its purest form,
the Aztec Empire for the first time: untainted by European concepts.
According to their semilegendary history, the
The next day, in the morning, we arrived at ancestral tribes that coalesced to form the Aztec
a broad Causeway, and continued our march
towards Iztapalapa, and when we saw so many nation had originated in western or northwest-
ern
confines
Mexico, far beyond the
of civilized
cities and villages built in the water and other
great towns on dry land and that straight and Mesoamerica. Like all such migration tales, the
level causeway going towards Mexico, we accounts are mutually conflicting: some sources
were amazed and said that it was like the place Aztec origins in Aztlan (probably meaning
white heron"), an island in a lake,
"place of the
enchantments they tell of in the legend of
Amadis, on account of the great towers and while others have the Aztec nation emerging as
("seven
Chicomoztoc
seven distinct tribes from
cues [temples] and buildings rising from the
image
Led by four priests bearing the
caves").
water, and all built of masonry. And some of of their tribal deity Huitzilopochtli ("humming-
our soldiers even asked whether the things
that we saw were not a dream? 1 bird on the left"), the tribesmen are said to have
departed Aztlan in A.D. 1111 on a trek toward
But these strange and dangerous beings from their future destination, the Valley of Mexico,
another world were not there to wonder: they which they reached by the end of the thirteenth
had come to destroy this civilization and claim century. fig. 2. Colossal Statue of Coatlicue. Aztec, stone.
an empire for their sovereign, Emperor Charles v. Miraculous adventures befell the travelers Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Mexico City
For the reconstruction of the Aztec world along their way, particularly at a place called
that was obliterated by Spain, there is a wealth Coatepec ("snake hill"), where — somewhat
of information that is virtually unique for the illogically from our perspective, given his pres-
indigenous societies of the Western Hemi- ence at the start of the migration—the god ("she of the serpent skirt") and their sister
sphere. There are the eyewitness accounts of Huitzilopochtli was born. Within the mythol- Coyolxauhqui ("painted with bells"), the moon
the conquistadors themselves, beginning with ogy of the Aztec state this nativity story is goddess (cat. 357). One day as Coatlicue was
4
the politically motivated letters to his sovereign central. On Coatepec lived the Centzon Huitz- sweeping the temple on the top of the hill, a ball
2
from Hernan Cortes. There are the marvelous nahua ("four hundred southerners," the stars of of feathers leaped into her womb and magically
records and linguistic studies undertaken by the the night) along with their mother Coatlicue impregnated her with the future tribal deity.
early Franciscan friars, above all the Florentine Her jealous and enraged offspring cut off her
Codex, a stupendous, twelve-volume encyclope- head, an act commemorated by the colossal
dia of Aztec life and history compiled by the Coatlicue sculpture in the Museo Nacional de
remarkable man who was in effect the world's Antropologia in Mexico City, in which the
first field anthropologist, Fray Bernardino de mother goddess is depicted with two mighty
Sahagun. It was so complete and controversial a gushes of blood in the form of snakes leaping
work that it was suppressed at the order of from her severed neck.
3
Philip ii. Sahagiin's great opus is the starting Nevertheless Huitzilopochtli, now identified
point for every study of Aztec thought and soci- as the sun, came forth from his mother's womb
ety on the eve of the conquest. In Mexico, he fully armed and, in a cosmic struggle with his
was followed by other scholars from the men- siblings the stars and the moon, slew them with
dicant orders, but none of their reports were his serpent staff. After beheading his sister
ever the match of Sahagun's in understanding Coyolxauhqui, he hurled her lifeless body to the
and detail. foot of Coatepec and dismembered it.
Some of our most valuable sources are native. When the Aztecs arrived at long last in the
Richest of all are the pictorial screen-fold manu- fig. i. Huitzilopochtli. From Codex Borbonicus, p. 34 Valley of Mexico, they found it dotted with the
scripts from central Mexico; except for the (detail). Bibliotheque de 1'Assemblee Rationale, Paris cities and towns of long-settled, cultivated peo-

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