Article suitable for older students

Patolli - an Aztec oracle?

30th Sep 2024

Patolli stamp motif by Jorge Enciso

All the evidence suggests that Patolli has a very long history, was played throughout ancient Mesoamerica - and indeed should be considered one of the region’s distinctive and defining cultural features - existed in different forms, had profound symbolic associations, and was anything but ‘just’ a board game. In this article, rather than tackling the mechanics of the game, we attempt to draw out some of its less well known aspects. The word itself covers what Lieve Verbeeck calls ‘a multitude of sins’ - variants of game-boards in the archaeological record, game-boards in codices, and modern-day survivals/variants of the game (1998: 82) (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore).

Almost a century ago, Alfonso Caso noted that whilst the original term patolli referred specifically to the juego de la estera (game of the mat), and was derived from the name of the beans used as ‘dice’, over many years it became a generic term in Nahuatl to refer to ‘game’ in general. Molina’s classic 16th century Nahuatl dictionary already featured variants to accommodate European games: amapatolli (‘paper-patolli’) for playing cards and quauhpatolli (‘wood-patolli’) for chess.
That it was central to Mexica life is stressed by Miguel León-Portilla: ‘If life, as a Nahua poet said, is like the ancient game of patolli, in which the participants, on having thrown their bright-coloured dice, invoke their gods with the hope of winning, it must be recognised that the presence of the “faces” of men with markedly different features gave greater interest to the contest…’ He quotes from the Aztec Cantares mexicanos:-
’”In truth here [on earth] it is like a game of patolli!... We all must play patolli: We must go to the place of mystery”’ (1992: 208-9).

The Patolli board shown in picture 1 is the classic cross-shape (sometimes called ‘cruciform’) that we’re all familiar with. It’s the only one the Spaniards saw, the one preferred by the Aztecs and the only one drawn by post-invasion chroniclers. But it’s actually the ‘newer’ of two shapes, the older being the cross-and-frame shape - most commonly found in archaeological contexts in the Maya region and across Mesoamerica more broadly (Walden & Voorhies 2017). Games historians Swezey and Bittman (1983) call the former ‘Type II’ and the latter, the older, ‘Type I’ or ‘Proto-patolli’, over 70 diagrams of which have been found at Teotihuacán as far back as the (Early Classic period) fourth century CE (see pic 16), and amongst the Maya, Mixtecs, Nahuas and at Tula (ibid: 381, 413, Voorhies 2013: 112). It is possibly the longest-lasting, still played as a ceremonial game in Michoacán today and known by its Purépecha name k’uilichi (Depaulis 2018: 41). Incidentally, when it comes to defining the number of squares/spaces in Patolli boards we shouldn’t take the images depicted in the codices too literally: they don’t show actual boards, they just symbolise them (Mateos Higuera 1930: 18, Swezey & Bittman 1983: 402).

Who played Patolli, and in what contexts? Men and women took part (Ledyard Smith 1977: 356); the contexts vary. ‘The majority of Maya patolli boards are situated in elite, spatially restricted locations that could accommodate only a small number of people… Unlike descriptions of the public spectacle of Aztec patolli, most Maya boards are in spatially restrictive locations that could not accommodate many onlookers’ (Walden & Voorhies 2017: 216). At Teotihuacán too evidence for the game was found in residential - albeit communal - settings (Sánchez 1982: 236), and at Tula boards were found in positions allowing the players to be comfortable, either sitting or leaning at a bench or against a column (Swezey & Bittman 1983: 384).
From Belize to the American Southwest, varieties of Patolli ‘boards’ - and small pottery objects that could be gaming pieces - have been found etched onto rocks, on altars in front of stelae, on ceramic dishes in burials, on plaster floors, and of course represented in codices. It seems fair to conclude that Patolli ‘may have originated with game boards drawn on the ground and only later were etched into plaster surfaces’ (Walden & Voorhies 2017: 217).

It seems universally agreed that the action in the game followed a continuous circuit, and Verbeeck comments that ‘this cyclical movement of players returning to their starting point and leaving again for another round is typical for Mesoamerican thinking’ (1998: 96). Furthermore, scholars have long recognised that the length of the circuit - 52 spaces if each player passes along only the three arms of the board closest to him/her - represented the ancient Mesoamerican ‘century’, each square symbolising a year (Mateos Higuera 1982: 19). Interestingly, this format is maintained today in the Tarascan game kolica atárakua (Swezey & Bittman 1983: 400). Clearly the game had cosmological associations; a century ago the great Mexican historian Alfonso Caso noticed that the arms of the board found at El Pedregal de San Angel (Coyoacan) were aligned exactly with the four cardinal directions (1927: 210) - this suggested to Kendall, who reported the same findings at the Classic Maya site of Seibal (Guatemala), in his major (1980) study of Patolli, that the game mat, like its big brother the ritual ball court, represented the flat plane of the earth. Evidence from the Maya lowlands suggests the game, known locally as Bul, had - and has today - agricultural associations linked to the ‘vigil of the maize’: players moved pieces along the ‘corn-track’ by throws of four corn-dice, and farmers mentioned playing bul in their prayers ‘as another ritual obligation that is being fulfilled’ (1998: 85). In an uncompetitive and harmonious atmosphere ‘the game reflects the farmers’ life’ (ibid: 91).

Timothy Kendall’s in-depth study of Patolli undoubtedly broke new ground in our understanding of the game; but he wasn’t the first to notice parallels with the ritual ballgame - and with the Voladores ceremony. Half a century before, Mexican historian and codices scholar Salvador Mateos Higuera stressed their symbolic links (1930: 19); earlier still, in his 1904 commentaries on the Codex Borgia, Eduard Seler posited connections between Patolli, the ballgame, and the movement of celestial bodies (1963: 233-4). The parallels are striking: same deities linked to the games, the ball court like the board game mat divided into four quarters, prayers/rituals and omen-taking preceding both, same involvement of gambling... ‘The [ritual game] ball represented an astral body, as we suspect the pebbles [counters] did. Even the sudden, unexpected end of the game, when the ball passed through the hoop, was like the sudden, unexpected end of a patolli game, when one of the dice stood up on end’ (Kendall, 1980: 33).

Intriguingly, a sacred material associated with movement and transformation (Escalante 2004: 253-4) - rubber - was common to Patolli and the ritual ballgame: the outlines of Patolli boards were drawn with liquid rubber on portable reed mats (known today as petates) that were used by itinerant Patolli players for playing the game on (Caso 1927, Kendall 1980). Indeed the very word for rubber in Nahuatl - ollin - also means Movement, number 17 in the cycle of twenty calendar signs. We know of course that the movement of the bouncing rubber ball in the ritual game symbolised the movement of the sun (god) in the sky. The idea that Patolli had cosmological associations is hinted at by the presence of the Ollin sign in the centre of the two (Type 1) game board icons in the Mixtec Codex Vindobonensis: they ‘each bear in their axial position the day symbol ollin (or olin), usually translated “undulant movement”...’ with the same astronomical, calendrical and directional implications as the cross sign. ‘The use of the sign ollin here, in fact, is paralleled by the tiny cross in the centre square of the published board from Seibal [see pic 3], and in each of the boards depicted in the Codices Borgia and Vatican, the cross of squares in the centre of the “frame” is drawn so as to imitate the intertwining parts of the ollin sign’ (Kendall 1980: 37).

Little wonder, then, that Swezey, referring to Seler’s comments on the game boards in Vindobonensis concludes that Patolli was ‘a kind of portable ballgame’ (Swezey & Bittman 1983: 379). Time and again we find Patolli referred to - and depicted - alongside the ritual ballgame; in Chapter III of Sahagún’s Primeros Memoriales we find patolli and the ball court in the middle of a list of ‘all the different things the ruler attended to’ amongst a wide range of issues: war, death, dancing, installing of a ruler and lords, famine, plague, payment to the gods, guarding the city, sweeping… (Sahagún 1997: 197-8).
Gambling - an addiction in many cultures around the world - was a common feature of both ballgame and board game and is well documented (Verbeeck 1998: 82). Betting - by both players and onlookers - was heavy and pathological addicts, as much as adulterers and thieves, were feared (Florentine Codex 9: 41). Financial ruin could befall them.

What motivated the players to risk everything in this way? Was their behaviour individualistic, purely for personal, selfish gain? Or was it, as Johansson suggests, a ‘creative rite’ that sought to resolve the fate of the collectivity: the invocation to Macuil Xochitl (Five-Flower), god of games (pic 1) was not intended to favour one contestant over others but to ‘implicate the god in a playful determination of [players’] destiny’ (2004: 9). To predict, prepare for - indeed, conceivably to influence - future events was of profound importance to the Nahua. In Kendall’s words Patolli ‘seems to have been a particularly elaborate fortunetelling device. Indeed, under certain intense gambling conditions, it could even be made to bring about one’s fortune, whether happy or evil. Through prayer and ritual, patolli became as real and as full of unfathomable power as the cosmos itself... Their bets, always far higher than moderation or common sense would dictate, may not have been so much folly as acts of devotion. By risking something of great value - one’s house, one’s lands, even one’s own person - a player would seem to be offering assurance to the gods of his absolute faith and trust in them’ (1980: 24-5). Little wonder, then, that the relationship between player and game was highly personal and might involve ‘a dialogue of begging, worshipping, seducing, regretting, getting angry, and of benevolence, forgiveness, cursing and more’ (Proyecto Hunab Ku, 28/10/23 personal communication).

We appear close to suggesting that the game board acted in Aztec life as an oracle, communicating the wishes of the gods and hence to be consulted, amongst others, by merchants and warriors before embarking on journeys or battles. But is there any real evidence of this? Well actually, yes! Though glyphs depicting Patolli are ‘beyond rare’ in the codices (Offner, 15/11/23, personal communication), when they do appear they can be most revealing. The Codex Xolotl contains a final two page composition (Pages 9-10) centered in the Basin of Mexico recounting the trials and tribulations of Nezahualcoyotl, future ruler of Texcoco in the years when he was being persecuted by the then all-powerful Tepanecas of Azcapotzalco (pic 9). Two Patolli boards are shown, representing the game itself. In the first instance (arrowed, centre of picture 9) the player holds a counter (bean, with eyes).

He is Tencoyomitzin, an opportunistic informer to Maxtla, generally portrayed as an unfit successor to his father, Tezozomoc of Azcapotzalco. Maxtla avidly seeks Nezahualcoyotl’s death. During the course of a Patolli game, Tencoyomitzin had overheard plans, discussed in coded fashion (‘cifradamente’) by other players, of an organizing rebellion led by Nezahualcoyotl against Maxtla (as recounted by the historian Ixtlilxóchitl 1985: 369). Note the two other players speak but he does not and that these players’ name glyphs are recorded to their perpetual disgrace) (pic 10). After the game at Tlalnepantla Tencoyomitzin travels to Azcapotzalco to report what he overheard to Maxtla. Thus, the vice-ridden game leads to negligent or traitorous behaviour among all its players to the benefit of an unfit ruler. The depiction of the board game at Azcapotzalco may indicate that Tencoyomitzin is trying to engage Maxtla (pic 11) in the perspective and practices of that game.

Maxtla proceeds to despatch a military man to investigate; he begins following the same route back taken earlier by Tencoyomitzin (note the parallel sets of footprints - pic 11, top right); but he ends up meeting with a messenger sent to the Coatlichan area by Nezahualcoyotl. Maxtla also sends a force of at least four men to capture or kill Nezahualcoyotl at his palace Cillan where he is shown on top of a ballcourt with his wise friend and advisor, Coyohua (see Lesbre 2007) who helps him escape from the Tepanecas with a ruse involving Coyahua’s cape and a hole behind Nezahualcoyotl’s tepotzoicpalli (throne with backrest) from which he escapes on the day 1 Cuetzpalin.
Patrick Lesbre (2000) has written on the role of the ball game in Aztec politics and it is no surprise that a ball game appears on this fateful pair of pages in the Codex Xolotl. Jerry Offner (1993) has also analyzed a ball game between Nezahualpilli and Moteuczoma Xocoyotl in the last years before contact that served several purposes, including an oracular one. The joint composition of Pages 9 and 10 in the Codex Xolotl shows Maxtla involved with treachery and bad behaviour involving the smaller game of Patolli, while Nezahualcoyotl, well advised and protected by Coyohua, outwits Maxtla and his soldiers in a sequence that involves him making initial decisions on top of a ball court. It seems better to be master of the big, rather than the small, game.

Patolli also makes a couple of very rare appearances in (post-invasion) codices as a toponym or place-name. A glyph of a game board with four beans features in the Lienzo de Metlatoyuca, in the British Museum’s collections (pic 12), clearly located on a boundary route. The cloth map (which according to Jerome Offner [2014] actually centres on the town of Taxco in the municipality of Tetela Ocampo in southern Puebla) has no gloss and there is some uncertainty as to the actual name of the community in question. Brotherston (1995) calls it Patoltetitlan, Berger (1996) calls it Patoltecoya. As the former it is mentioned in the Anales de Cuauhtitlan as being a tribute-paying town to the Aztecs during the reign of Moctezuma II.

In the Lienzos de Acaxochitlan, near the town of Huachinango, a small Patolli toponym appears (pic 13), named, according to Stresser-Pean (1998), Patoltecoyan. Why would communities be named after Patolli? What do the names actually mean?
As Frances Berdan (personal communication, 15/11/123) explains ‘without a locative or any glyphic element other than the patolli board and beans, beyond patol- it’s hard to know what the town’s full name might be... whether Patoltecoya or Patoltetitlan or Patollan for that matter… Placenames often reflected special notable characteristics of a place… this may have been a particularly fun place to go... or, there may have been one or more patolli boards painted on natural surfaces (such as rocks)’. This is confirmed by Jerome Offner (p.c. 15/11/23) ‘the -tetitlan is very likely “among the rocks, or a pair of rocks”. “Patolli among the rocks” or “patolli between two rocks”… Perhaps the patol- place name occurs when there are parallel lines occurring on a natural surface and/or piles of smooth rocks that could be imagined as playing pieces.’

Another example features in the Tira de Copila, also known as the Itzcuintepec Roll, in the British Museum (pic 14, centre left). The locality in question is very near Huachinango (Offner, p.c. 17/11/23). Disagreement exists even in terms of the meaning of the place names. Herrera (1997), alongside Franco (1946) for instance, suggests Patoltecoya means ‘donde se desgranan colorines (Erythrina coralloides)’ (‘Where the Seeds are Shelled’), supposedly referring to the seeds used as dice. Peñafiel (1895: 501) on the other hand suggests the name means ‘Lugar en que se anuncia o grita el juego de patol’ (‘Place Where the Patolli Game is Announced’).
Clearly the toponym indicated in each case a place with a connection to the board game, but was the scribe emphasising the importance of that location as a popular gambling centre? Somehow, in the words of Jerome Offner, ‘it is unlikely a tiny village far from anywhere was the Monte Carlo of the Aztec world!’ (p.c. 17/11/23).

Patolli was fiercely suppressed as an idolatrous practice by Spanish religious authorities - Fray Diego Durán reported in the 16th century that ‘painted lottery mats were destroyed... [and even] the beans which served as dice in their hands were burned’ (Kendall 1980: 45). Yet it survived and - a testament to the strength of Indigenous Mesoamerican cultures - is still played today, albeit under a variety of names - petol (Puebla), lizla (Totonac), bul/baac (lowland Maya), patole (NW Mexico), kolia atárakua (Tarascan), baq (highland Quiché), romavóa or quinze (Tarahumara) (Walden & Voorhies 2017). Ironicallly, ‘the Spanish themselves seem to have helped the game in its diffusion, unaware of its presence. It is clearly with the Spaniards that the patol game, sometimes called quince (fifteen), reached the American Southwest and settled in the Pueblo and the Zuñi countries. It is there that some newcomers, coming from the North or from the Great Plains, and getting in contact with the Pueblos in the 18th century, found the game and took it over… A careful examination of zohn ahl shows that it has kept the basic features of an ancient game that came – in Spanish times – from Mexico and may have been popular in Teotihuacan times…’ (Depaulis 2018: 30).

Special thanks to Dr. Jerome Offner; thanks for additional guidance and advice to Professors Frances Berdan, Elizabeth Boone, and Barbara Mundy, and the team at Proyecto Hunab Ku, Puebla.

References/sources:-
• Anales de Cuauhtitlan y Leyenda de los Soles/Códice Chimalpopoca (1992), trans. Primo Feliciano Velázquez, 3rd. ed., UNAM Mexico City
• Berger, Uta (1996) ‘The “Map of Metlatoyuca” – A Mexican Manuscript in the Collection of the British Museum’, The Cartographic Journal, vol. 33 no. 1, 39-49, June
• Bernal, Ignacio (1963) Teotihuacan: Descubrimientos, Reconstrucciones, INAH/SEP, Mexico City
• Brotherston, Gordon (1995) Painted Books from Mexico, British Museum Press
• Caso, Alfonso (1927) ‘Un antiguo juego mexicano: el Patolli’, El México Antiguo pp 203-211
• Códice Xolotl (1980), Edición y estudio de Charles E. Dibble, UNAM/Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Mexico City
• Depaulis, Thierry (2018) ‘Ancient American Board Games, I: From Teotihuacan to the Great Plains’, Board Games Studies Journal, vol. 12, no. 1, October
• Escalante Gonzalbo, Pablo (Ed.) (2004) Historia de la Vida Cotidiana en México I: Mesoamérica y los ámbitos indígenas de la Nueva España, Colegio de México/Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City
• Florentine Codex Book 9 - The Merchants (1959) trans. Charles E. Dibble & Arthur J.O. Anderson, School of American Research/University of Utah, Santa Fe
• Franco, Felipe (1946) Indonimia geográfica del estado de Puebla, Editorial Mundo Nuevo, Mexico City
• Herrera M., Maria del Carmen (1997) ‘Algunos glifos temporales y espaciales en el lienzo de Metlaltoyuca’, Códices y documentos sobre México, 2, vol. I, INAH, Mexico, 349-366
• Ixtlilxochitl, Fernando de Alva (1985) Obras Históricas, vol. 1, Ed. O’Gorman, UNAM, Mexico City
• Johansson K., Patrick (2004) Zazanilli: La palabra enigma - Acertijos y adivinanzas de los antiguos nahuas, McGraw Hill Interamericana, Mexico City
• Kendall, Timothy (1980) Patolli – A Game of Ancient Mexico, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• Ledyard Smith, A. (1977) ‘Patolli, at the Ruins of Seibal, Petén Guatemala’, in Social Processes in Maya History (ed. Normand Hammond), Academic Press, London
• León-Portilla, Miguel (1992) The Aztec Image of Self and Society, University of Utah Press
• Lesbre, Patrick (2000) ‘Coyohua-Itlatollo: The Coyohua cycle (Examples of Aztec mythology)’, Latin American Indian Literatures Journal 16, no. 1: 47–75
• ------- (2007) ‘Jeu de pelote et politique dans le monde aztèque’, C.M.H.L.B. Caravelle 89: 11–34
• Mateos Higuera, Salvador (1982 [orig. 1930]) Breve Monografía y Reglas del Patolli – El Juego de los Mexicanos, Mexico
• Molina, Fray Alonso (1992 [orig. 1571]) Vocabulario en Lengua Castellana y Mexicana y Mexicana y Castellana, Editorial Porrúa, Mexico City
• Offner, Jerome A. (1993) ‘Dueling Rulers and Strange Attractors: Some Patterns of Disorder and Killing in Aztec Society’, PoLAR Political and Legal Anthropology Review 16 (2): 65–74
• --------- (2014) ‘Why the Mapa de Metlatoyuca is not the Map of Metlatoyuca: It is the Mapa de Taxco (Tlachco), Municipio Tetela de Ocampo, Puebla, Mexico’, Contributions in New World Archaeology, vol. 7, Mesoamerican Writing Systems, 159-176
• Peñafiel, Antonio (2013, [orig. 1895]) Nomenclatura geográfica de México, Porrúa, Mexico City
• Sahagún, Fray Bernardino de (1997) Primeros Memoriales: Paleography of Nahuatl Text and English Translation by Thelma D. Sullivan, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman
• Sánchez Sánchez, Jesús (1982) ‘El Conjunto NW del Río San Juan’ in Memoria del Proyecto Arqueológico Teotihuacan 1980-82, Coord. R. Cabrera, Mexico, INAH
• Seler, Eduard (1963, [orig. 1904]) Comentarios al Códice Borgia, vol. 2, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City
• Stresser-Péan, Guy (1998) Los lienzos de Acaxochitlán (Hidalgo) y su importancia en la historia del poblamiento de la sierra norte de Puebla y zonas vecinas, Centre Français d’Études Mexicaines et Centraméricaines, Mexico
• Swezey, William R. & Bittman, Bente (1983) ‘El rectángulo de cintas y el patolli: nueva evidencia de la antigüedad, distribución, variedad y formas de practicar este juego precolombino’ Mesoamérica 6:374-416
• Verbeeck, Lieve (1998) ‘Bul: A Patolli Game in Maya Lowland’, Board Games Studies, 1, 1998, 82-100
• Voorhies, Barbara (2013) ‘The Deep Prehistory of Indian Gaming: Possible Late Archaic Period Game Boards at the Tlacuachero Shellmound, Chiapas, Mexico’, Latin American Antiquity, 24(1), 98-115
• Walden, John & Voorhies, Barbara (2017) ‘Ancient Maya Patolli’, chapter 12 in Prehistoric Games of North American Indians (ed. Voorhies), Uni of Utah Press.

Picture sources:-
• Main: illustration scanned from Jorge Enciso: Sellos del Antiguo México, Mexico City, 1947
• Pic 1: Illustration scanned from Alfonso Caso: The Aztecs - People of the Sun, University of Oklahoma Press, 1958
• Pic 2: image downloaded from https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Am2006-Drg-226; © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence
• Pic 3: Gift of Doris Zemurray Stone. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, PM# 2004.1.411.2 (digital file# 99270022)
• Pic 4: image scanned from Mateos Higuera, Salvador (1982), op cit
• Pic 5: Codex Borgia image scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1976
• Pic 6: as picture 2 above
• Pic 7: photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore; animated GIF by Mexicolore
• Pic 8: image from the Codex Mendoza scanned from the James Cooper Clark 1938 facsimile edition, London
• Pic 9: image photographed from the Códice Xolotl (1980) Dibble edition, op cit
• Pix 10, 11, 13 & 14: images by, courtesy of and © 2017 Jerome A. Offner, image 11 by Antonino Cosentino, CHSOS
• Pic 12: image © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence
• Pic 15: Photo (L) by/courtesy of Alfredo Benite Vertez and Minaluaztekatl Vázquez Hernández; photos (centre) courtesy of Minaluaztekatl Vázquez Hernández; photo (R) by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Pic 16: images scanned from Bernal (1963) Teotihuacan, op cit.

Q. What term would we use today to diagnose an Aztec board game addict?
A. A PATOLogical gambler...!

Aztec limerick no. 67 (ode to Patolli) -
Some call Patolli an oracle –
A board game most metaphorical!
Commoner to king,
They consulted the thing
Casting beans – in ways allegorical…

‘Classic Maya Patolli’‘The Aztecs, patolli and gambling’