Article suitable for older students

Tepoztli (axe)

8th Dec 2024

Display of copper axe blades, Sala Oaxaca, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City

You might imagine that in ancient Mesoamerica axes were either used as simple chopping tools or as crude weapons in war. In fact, their importance to the Mexica-Aztecs encompassed not so much weaponry but rather morality, carpentry, trade, ritual alcoholic consumption, even symbolic gifts during rites of passage... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

As far as weapons go, world-class scholars such as John Pohl and Ross Hassig agree that, while certainly intimidating and ‘probably as old as the spear-thrower - they appear in early Olmec art dating to 1000 BC as war implements in the hands of paramount chiefs’, axes were anything but widespread in Aztec times: they lacked both the range of other projectiles and the reach of competing shock weapons like the sword or thrusting spear. Spanish chroniclers fail to mention them, and the depictions of them in codices tend to feature deities bearing axes in symbolic and ritual contexts - such as threatening punishment (see picture 1) - rather than as military arms.
In fact, the cast copper axe tied to a curved wooden handle was a key identifying symbol for one Mexica god: Tepoztécatl, one of many gods of the alcoholic drink pulque, whose cult centred around the community of Tepoztlan. He represented the intoxicating power of pulque, considered a magical beverage; and a good axe is one of several agricultural tools still used today to harvest agaves.

Excess consumption, of course, was not only ill advised but dangerous and subject to punishment from the gods. In Tepoztlan, an age-old custom involved a ritual in which dancers wielded copper axes as a warning when a drunkard died from consuming too much pulque (Mateos Higuera, 1994, 4: 44); ironically, though, one could be ‘rewarded’ with a jug-load of pulque by winning the competition held on 2-Rabbit days (dedicated to pulque deities) to find the single genuine straw amongst 260 duds - follow the ‘Straw poll’ link below to learn more...
Copper axes were exchanged in markets as a form of common currency, alongside cacao and cotton capes. Copper items were grouped together in marketplaces, and formed part of tribute lists of annual goods to be supplied to Tenochtitlan. The province of Quiauhteopan (in present-day Guerrero state) (pic 2) was one of two shown in the Codex Mendoza that paid considerable amounts in tribute in copper items. The other was neighbouring Tepequacuilco.

Copper artefacts abounded in Western Mexico, the Mixtec-Zapotec zone and Western Guatemala, according to research by David Prendergast (Berdan & Rieff Anawalt, 1992, 2: 91). The uplands around Tzicapuzalco ‘were home to a tree called huaxquahuitl, from which good axe handles and digging sticks were made’ (ibid: 77). Two communities in particular feature in the Codex Mendoza with toponyms (name glyphs) based on copper: Tepoztlan (‘Where There Is Much Copper’) and Tepoztitlan (‘Among the Copper’) (pic 3).
Axes came in two forms (see pic 4): either with the blade of ground stone or cast copper wedged into the perforated aperture of a wooden handle, or glued and tied strongly around the top of the handle.

Axes even featured in an important rite of passage for Aztec youths - when taking leave from school in order to marry. Bernardino de Sahagún mentions the telpochtepuztli (youth axe) in Book 6 of the Florentine Codex, given symbolically to the ‘masters of youth’ (ie school leaders) by old men of the community in a ceremony, at the end of which ‘the masters of the youths departed bearing the axes’ (1969: 128).

Sources/references:-
• Berdan, Frances & Anawalt, Patricia Rieff (1992): The Codex Mendoza, vol. 2 ‘Description of the Codex Mendoza’, University of California Press
• Hassig, Ross (1988) Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control, University of Oklahoma Press (pp. 90-92)
• León-Portilla, Miguel (2005) ‘El Tonalámatl de los Pochtecas (Códice Fejérváry-Mayer), Estudio introductorio y comentarios’, Arqueología Mexicana, special edition no. 18, Mexico City
• Mateos Higuera, Salvador (1994) Los Dioses Menores, Enciclopedia gráfica del México antiguo, Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, Mexico City (vol. 4)
• Pohl, John (2001) Aztec Warrior AD1325-1521, Osprey Military, Oxford, p.20 & p.60
• Sahagún, Bernardino (1969) The Florentine Codex - Book 6: Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy (trans. Dibble & Anderson), School of American Research and University of Utah, Santa Fe.

Picture sources:-
• Main: photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore (Sala Oaxaca, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City)
• Pic 1: image from the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1971
• Pix 2 & 3: images from the Codex Mendoza (original in the Bodleian Library, Oxford) scanned from our own copy of the James Cooper Clark 1938 facsimile edition, London
• Pic 4: image from the Codex Tudela scanned from our own copy of the Colección Thesaurus Americae 2002 facsimile edition, Madrid.

Aztecs

Maya

Tepoztli (axe)

Comments (0)

More Aztec Artefacts