30 May 2025 / 10 House
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Find out moreWhy did the Aztecs sculpt goddesses?
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Lucas: What was the purpose of sculpting Aztec goddesses? For example, in Chalchiuhtlicue’s case, what did the Aztecs use the sculpture for? For rituals or just for decorative purposes? Also, how exactly did they make the sculptures and what was their motivation behind it? I can’t find any clear source that indicates this, so a clarification here would help me a lot! (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
It turns out that the majority of Mexica-Aztec stone sculptures - and there are plenty! - are of female deities, and in particular the goddess with a ‘temple headdress’, usually presumed to represent Chicomecoatl (pic 1). We can do no better than to quote verbatim from a world expert on this, Esther Pasztory, from her classic work Aztec Art (pp. 218-220)...
This goddess is usually standing, her face framed by a headdress almost as big as she is. Its rectangular panels resemble a temple front, the goddess looking through a doorlike opening. This headdress is the stone version of a flat frame called the amacalli, or ‘house of paper’, to which paper streamers, rosettes, and knots were attached...
The Goddess with Temple Headdress is a maize deity, often holding double ears of corn in her hands. The object in the hand of the Berlin Museum goddess (pic 2) is a rattle staff, associated with the ritual of many fertility deities...
Stone statues of her are the most numerous of any subject. They range from large, well-made statues to small, crude ones that almost give the impression of being mass-produced. Her cult was not primarily for the rulers of most cities nor for the priests, and seems to have belonged to the non-elite population. the metaphor for fruitfulness is not that of a woman’s ripe or pregnant body; the goddess’s body is constrained and hidden by the rectangular frame symbolising the demands of house, field, and harvest sacrifice, and her reward takes the form of the two ears of maize. The virtues suggested are self-effacement and sacrifice.
The flat planes of the standing Goddess with Temple Headdress are atypical of Aztec sculpture, usually more rounded in its forms. The cult of this goddess and the type of statue associated with its may have come from the east, perhaps from the Huastec region, where statues of standing deities in that style were erected before the Aztec period.
Second most frequent in stone sculptures is the goddess who wears on her head a fillet bordered with disks, with two large tassels hanging down over her ears (pic 3). She is customarily dressed in a skirt and a triangular shoulder cloth or shawl, also ornamented with tassels. The Goddess with Tasseled Headdess is usually kneeling in the pose proper for an Aztec woman, or, less frequently, standing. Her hands are in her lap except in the few examples where, like all the gods of fertility, she holds ears of corn.
This goddess is often identified as Chalchiuhtlicue (jade skirt)... the goddess of water, painted blue in the codices, and in mythology she is described as the wife, mother, or sister of Tlaloc, the rain god, with the surface waters of rivers and lakes as her special province. The is mainly a domestic goddess, concerned not with rain, thunder, or the unpredictable sea - the province of male gods - but with ground water close to home and the fields. Because water was believed to purify, newborn children were dedicated by the midwife to Chalchiuhtlicue, as she could wash off the sins of the parents.
Sculptures of this goddess represent the purity and preciousness of water through the image of a beautiful virgin... Women in Aztec sculpture are shown are shown at different ages, thereby relating them to the life cycle of maize.
The goddess’s oval face, well-proportioned features, and calm gaze present the Aztec ideal of a modest girl. As she is not a goddess of maize or fruition, but of water, a necessary precondition of growth, she is not a mature woman but a youthful girl. Beautiful carvings of this goddess in the style of Tenochtitlan indicate her importance for that city, built in the middle of a lake.
We hope this entry goes some way towards answering your questions...
Source:-
• Pasztory, Esther (1983) Aztec Art, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York
Picture sources:-
• Pix 1 & 3: photos © The Trustees of the British Museum
• Pic 2: photo by and courtesy of Rob, Germany
• Pic 4: photos by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore.
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