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Who were the Aztecs from Mexico.

This is the story of a wandering tribe from Northern Mexico who through bravery, trickery, cruelty, genius became a great civilization.

There are stories to read, explanations to understand, pictures to think about, ancient writings to decode, pictures of artefacts and temples … even a giant sunstone.

By 1376, the city was growing quickly … they built larger and larger temples … people came from miles around to live in their city … Tenochtitlan. They chose a man called  Acamapichtli as their first emperor. He ruled until 1395.

The city and the Aztecs were all powerful… an EMPIRE.

By 1519 there were about 60,000 people in the city every day.

The Aztecs brought their many gods and goddesses with them.

As a farming people, the Aztec knew the forces of nature and worshiped them as gods. Most important was their sun god, Huitzilopochtli. The Aztecs also used him as their god of war.

They believed that their ‘good’ gods should be kept strong to keep away the ‘bad’ gods. They kept them strong by making human sacrifices.

They had many stories about their gods.   Read some of them.

Aztec Gods

Aztec god

Before the Sun that now shines brightly over Mexico came into being, there had been other suns; four in all.

Each sun died away in turn before our present Sun appeared.

The fourth Sun, Chalchuitlicu, had been a water goddess, copper-coloured and dressed in emerald green.

For hundreds of years she provided light and warmth; and in that time the first men and women appeared on Earth.

But other gods grew jealous of the Sun God; some reproached her for giving fire to humans — for they did not always use it wisely.

Tezcatlipoca upsets Chalchuitlicu and causes a flood.

One night, the black God of Darkness, Tezcatlipoca, began to torment the gentle copper Sun while she was resting in the gloom. He said she’d grown too vain and selfish.

In her hurt at these false words, Chalchuitlicu burst into tears. The tears put out her light and then the sky rained down upon the Earth in torrents.

The land vanished into darkness beneath a mighty flood which drowned all  human life: every man and woman turned into fish; all, that is, save one lone family which survived to start the human race again.

The gods make dry land appear …

When the sky thus fell on Earth, the gods opened up four roads beneath the land, where they created four giants and some sturdy trees. And then, together — the gods, the trees, the giants — all tried to lift the Earth from under the vales of tears.

They heaved and pushed until the land rose upwards and the waters fell away. At last they managed to fasten the land securely to the sky.

Now there was only darkness …

But the Earth was still plunged into utter gloom; it had no dawn, no dusk, no sunlit days. The vales of tears were salty; there was thus no fresh water, for no Sun appeared to draw the tears back up to heaven and change them into rain.

Aztec god

Tlaloc was the Aztec rain god

His name means He Who Makes Things Sprout.

Tlaloc was the eighth ruler of the days and the ninth lord of the nights.

Tlaloc was pictured as a man wearing a net of clouds, a crown of heron feathers, foam sandals and carrying rattles to make thunder.

Tlaloc lived in a place the Aztecs called Tlalocan. He lived there with  his companion, Chalchiuhtlicue (She Who Wears a Jade Skirt), also called Matlalcueye (She Who Wears a Green Skirt), the goddess of freshwater lakes and streams. Tlalocan was also the place where all people who had drowned ‘lived’.

Part of The Teocalli (Great Temple) at Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, was dedicated to Tlaloc, and was painted in white and blue.

Tlaloc was  greatly feared.

He could send out the rain or provoke drought and hunger.

Aztec god

He hurled lightning upon the earth and unleashed the devastating hurricanes.

It was believed that he could send down to the earth different kinds of rain which would help crops grow or destroy them.

Certain illnesses, such as dropsy, leprosy, and rheumatism, were said to be caused by Tlaloc.

Quetzalcoatl

(from quetzalli, “precious feather,” and coatl, “snake”), the Feathered Serpent, was one of the major gods of the Aztecs.

Quetzalcoatl was the god of morning and the evening star.

Aztec god

As the morning and evening star, Quetzalcoatl was the symbol of death and resurrection.

With his friend, Xolotl, a dog-headed god, he was said to have descended to the underground hell of Mictlan to gather the bones of the ancient dead. Those bones he smeared with his own blood, giving birth to the men who inhabit the present universe.

Quetzalcoatl was often shown as a man with a beard named Ehecatl, the wind god. Sometimes he was shown wearing a mask with two protruding tubes (through which the wind blew) and a conical hat.

The temple Quetzalcoatl at Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, was a round building, a shape that fitte

d Ehecatl. Circular temples were believed to please Ehecatl because they offered no sharp obstacles to the wind.

TEZCATLIPOCA -

The god of the Great Bear constellation and of the night sky.

Tezcatlipoca’s animal disguise, was the jaguar, the spotted skin of which was compared to the starry sky.

Tezcatlipoca was usually drawn with a stripe of black paint across his face and an obsidian (black glass ) mirror in place of one of his feet (his name means Smoking Mirror).

Sometimes drawings show  Tezcatlipoca with his mirror on his chest.

In it he saw everything, he knew all the deeds and thoughts of men.
He was said to appear at crossroads at night to challenge warriors.

He presided over the telpochcalli (“young men’s houses”), district schools in which the sons of the common people received an education and military training.

He was the protector of slaves, he severely punished masters who ill-treated “Tezcatlipoca’s beloved children.” He rewarded goodness by giving riches and fame, and he punished wrongdoers by sending them sickness (e.g. leprosy) or by giving them poverty and slavery.

Every year, during the fifth month, the priest selected a young and handsome war prisoner. For one year he lived in princely luxury, pretending to be the god. Four beautiful girls dressed as goddesses were chosen as his companions. On the appointed feast day he climbed the steps of a small temple while breaking flutes that he had played. At the top he was sacrificed by the removal of his heart! What a price to pay!

I hope you have enjoyed learning this part of the Aztecs and Mexican history.

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