Article suitable for older students

Women who died in childbirth

26th Dec 2023

Aztec deified woman who had died in childbirth; Codex Borgia pl. 47

‘[Mexica] Warriors who died in battle became “companions of the sun” on its journey through the heavens in the “eastern paradise”. After spending four years travelling with the sun, the warriors’ inner spirits or “souls” either returned to earth as hummingbirds, who could live on wild honey, or returned as butterflies.
’Women who died in childbirth were turned into cihuapipiltin, deified women who occupied the “western paradise”, where they also accompanied the sun on its journey through the western sky...

‘When they returned to earth, their inner spirits or “souls” had been turned into moths. In Aztec pictorial manuscripts, women who died in childbirth were metaphorically portrayed as spinners who had woven nothing; they are represented in the Codex Borgia [main pic above] as Tlazolteteo-Ixcuiname, wearing headbands of unspun cotton from which the spindles are missing’. This description, by Joyce Marcus, is echoed by other scholars, who point out that the weaving batten or stick is depicted in the codices held by several Mexica goddesses (Xochiquetzal, Cihuacoatl, Ilamatecuhtli, Tonan, Tlazolteotl...) as if it were a weapon. ‘This may allude to the Mexica belief that the woman in childbirth was a woman going into battle, and that if she survived the battle her prize was the child; it was the captive she had valiantly taken. In this way she fulfilled her function as a woman; she had spun her thread and woven her cloth...
’However, if a woman did not survive the battle of childbirth and died with the child in her womb, she joined the deified women, the Cihuapipiltin, in Tonatiuh ichan, the House of the Sun. It was their task to carry the sun from its zenith down through the afternoon sky to its setting. When their work was done, they flew about searching for the spindles, battens, and weaving baskets they had left behind, and hovered over the crossroads doing mischief and inflicting diseases upon children. The women who died in childbirth were the spinners who had woven nothing...’ (Thelma Sullivan).

And Gordon Brotherston weaves into this a calendrical thread, centred on the annual Aztec feast Tititl, recorded in half a dozen codices, which ‘all concur in commemorating a goddess whose complex array has led to her being identified with the whole cluster of fundamental earth deities... “snake woman” Ciuacoatl... In this context, her distinctive features are a protruding tongue or a double-tongued head band [note it’s made of unspun cotton, indicating that her weaving had been left unfinished], a skull mask, a weaving batten (tzotzopaztli) and a skirt and garments that may be distinctively edged in four colours and adorned with lattice, heart, skull and crossbones, flower and other designs... She holds a batten and a round shield, emblems of female and male prowess’.
The dual concept of male and female warrior spirits, together, equally respected, equally brave, carrying the Sun on its daily path is of course strikingly depicted in the outer rim of the famous Mexica Sunstone...

Sources:-
• Brotherston, Gordon (2005) Feather Crown: The Eighteen Feasts of the Mexica Year, British Museum Research Publications (see plate 9 and page 46)
• Marcus, Joyce (1992) Mesoamerican Writing Systems, Princeton University Press (see page 270)
• Sullivan, Thelma D. (1982) ‘Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina: The Great Spinner and Weaver’, in The Art and Iconography of Late Post-Classic Central Mexico, eds. Elizabeth P. Benson & Elizabeth Hill Boone, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC (see pages 18-19).

Picture sources:-
• Main: image from the Codex Borgia scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1976
• Cihuacoatl: image scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition of the Codex Maglabechiano, Graz, Austria, 1970
• Sunstone graphic by Phillip Mursell/Mexicolore.

Comments (1)

yllw3461@gmail.com

17th Apr 2025

What happened to stillborns who died in childbirth?

Mexicolore

According to Inga Clendinnen (Aztecs 1991, p. 191), a stillborn child or ‘a child who died before being weaned remained free from involvement in the human condition, and retained its attachment to the world of the gods. The body was simply buried by the maize bins at the house entry, and the spirit was understood to return to the place from which it had been sent, the warm garden of Tonacatecutli, there to suck happily at one of the innumerable breasts of the Tree of Sustenance, the “Wet-Nurse Tree”, until it would be called again to be born into this world’.

Aztec deified woman who had died in childbirth; Codex Borgia pl. 47