30 May 2025 / 10 House
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Find out moreDid Aztec turquoise diadems and headdresses have different meanings?
Aztec feather headdress adorns Quetzalcoatl or Huemac Codex Duran
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Chris: I’ve always wondered what’s the difference in headwear with the aztecs. Like why did Moctezuma have that big feather headdress resembling US native headdresses but other aztec rulers wore the turquoise or gold diadems? When did the switch happen and did it ever go back and forth from diadem to feathers with different rulers deciding what they wanted? Did they carry different meanings? (Answer compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
Excellent question! The truth seems to be, in simple terms, that both were worn by the Mexica (Aztecs), both were precious and prestigious, and they were worn by both rulers and warriors.
A world expert on this, Justyna Olko, writes in Turquoise Diadems and Staffs of Office: ‘Feathers... were highly prized in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica and invested with profound symbolic meaning... Feathers, along with other precious costumes, effectuate the metamorphosis into more divine status or, generally, the transformation associated with the sacrificial act... Precious feathers were means through which the divine essence could manifest itself in the body of sacrificial victims assuring their transformation... as their identification with the tonalli [spirit] of rulers and nobles, that is, their spiritual life force derived from the celestial sphere and destiny’. Such headdresses were ’both royal and warriors’ headgears’ (emphasis added).
Olko gives many examples both of the xiuhhuitzolli (turquoise diadem) being worn by ‘warriors of special rank’ (though we associate it generally with rulers’ headgear) and of precious feather headdresses, like the quetzalpatzactli shown here (picture 1), also being worn by victorious warriors as part of their battle gear (though we generally associate them with the showy ceremonial headgear of rulers). Indeed, in some cases - such as in a Mexica stone relief in picture 2 - we can see a warrior wearing both. It’s confusing, to say the least! You can learn more about the turquoise diadem by following the link below: there you will also read that in Nahua histories, early rulers tend to wear feather headdresses ‘more evocative of the Chichimeca past’, whereas from the fourth ruler Itzcóatl onwards each each ruler wears a xiuhuitzolli.
Uncertainty has long surrounded the famous headdress that legend has it was gifted by Moctezuma II to Cortés (picture 3). As a headdress it may have been part of royal or ritual regalia, perhaps in the case of deity impersonation: Diego Durán illustrates priest-king Quetzalcoatl wearing a similar feather headdress (see main picture, above), but as Esther Pasztory suggests in Aztec Art, ‘such feather objects were standards attached to a bamboo framework and worn as military insignia on the warrior’s back’.
Conclusion: whilst it’s true there was a historical progression amongst Aztec rulers displaying their authority - from feather headdress to turquoise diadem (with its stronger Toltec connections) - both were commonly worn by rulers and by military leaders in large areas of ancient Mesoamerica.
Sources/references:-
• Olko, Justyna (2005) Turquoise Diadems and Staffs of Office: Elite Costume and Insignia of Power in Aztec and Early Colonial Mexico, University of Warsaw, Poland
• Pasztory, Esther (1983) Aztec Art, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York.
Picture sources:-
• Main: image scanned from Códice Durán - Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e Islas de Tierra Firme, Arrendedora Internacional, Mexico City, 1990
• Pic 1: image from 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
• Pic 2: image scanned from Olko (2005) - see above
• Pic 3: photo courtesy Museum of Ethnology (Museum für Völkerkunde), Vienna, Austria.
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Aztec feather headdress adorns Quetzalcoatl or Huemac Codex Duran
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