Mexicolore logoMexicolore name

Article suitable for Top Juniors and above

Find out more

Question for July 2019

What was bronze in Aztec beliefs?? Asked by St Johns CE Junior School. Chosen and answered by Professor Dorothy Hosler

Metal was divine, god-like and powerful because smelting (heating the metal or ore so that it becomes liquid) is in itself a magical process - a solid (rock) becomes liquid by heating it, then can be shaped (cast or hammered) in to completely different form - a bird, an armadillo, an arm band. Metal has colors - silvery and golden, and properties – hardness (an axe) and elasticity (a tweezer) THAT NO OTHER MATERIAL HAS!! It is resonant (sound) and lusterous (color) and it reflects!! - wouldn’t you think it was supernatural and magical? The sun is yellowish-golden and the moon is silvery (silver) and they thought that gold was smelted by the sun god and silver by the god of the moon. We know about gold being effluence of the sun and silver being effluence of the moon because the word for gold in Nahuatl means just that, the same for the word for silver. We don’t know the word for bronze but if you learn Nahuatl maybe you can find out for us!

Picture source:-
Image from the Florentine Codex (original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence) scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994.

‘Why did the Aztecs believe gold was the poo of the Sun God?’

Comments (2)

e

emilio

18th May 2024

that’s an easily disproven myth, the Aztecs did work bronze, as did other Mesoamericans, including the Maya, by the Post-Classic Period

j

james e maffie

20th Dec 2020

The Aztecs never concocted bronze (or steel), its being an alloy of tin, copper and other metals.

Professor Dorothy Hosler

Professor Dorothy Hosler

Recent answers