IN THE NEWS: latest excavations...

On Saturday July 14th., the British Museum hosted an extraordinarily revealing and highly informative lecture by Dr. Leonardo López Luján, Senior Researcher and Director of INAH’s (Mexico’s National Anthropology and History Institute) Templo Mayor Project in Mexico City, entitled ‘From the Sun Stone to the Earth Goddess monolith (1790-2007): Archaeology in the Aztec Capital, Tenochtitlan’. Dr. López Luján, who is on our ‘Ask the Experts’ Panel, illustrated his presentation beautifully with slides both of the excavations themselves and of archaeological and iconographic evidence supporting the identification of the monolith as Tlaltecuhtli.

Pic 2: Dr. Leonardo López Luján, Clore Education Centre, British Museum 14/7/07

Broken into four pieces, still with traces of red, ochre, white, blue and black paint, and discovered face upwards, the figure was made of andesite stone, quarried by the Aztecs from the shores of Lake Texcoco, some 6 miles from the centre of Tenochtitlan. Clearly female - giving-birth posture, wearing a skirt and sporting alternating skulls and bones in the fashion of Coatlicue, the Aztec Earth Goddess - the deity’s immediate identity was uncertain, and the experts ended up with a group of six (including Coatlicue), all known as ‘tzitzimime’, on their ‘short list’...

Pi 4: López Lujan and Matos Moctezuma describe the discovery of the Tlaltecuhtli monolith, Arqueología Mexicana, no. 83 (2007), pp.22-23; note its comparative size!

The long spurt of blood streaming from the deity’s tongue (Pic 7) is a powerful visual representation of Tlaltecuhtli’s devouring role, and a symbol of the divine link between human sacrifice and providing sustenance [food] to the Aztecs’ gods. In the top half of a beautifully sculpted greenstone plaque commemorating the completion of the Temple of Huitzilopochtli in 1487 (now in the Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City) rulers Tizoc (L) and Ahuítzotl (R) pierce their ears with bones to offer streams of blood to Mother Earth (along the bottom) (Pic 6).

Pic 6: Adapted from a drawing of the Tizoc and Ahuízotl Dedication Stone in ‘Aztec Art’ by Esther Pasztory, New York, 1983, p. 150

Tellingly, right in the bottom left-hand corner of the newly discovered monolith, within one of Tlaltecuhtli’s claws, is carved (Pic 9) the date sign ‘10 Rabbit’ - the year (1502) in which the emperor Ahuítzotl died (by an odd coincidence he was also crowned in another 10-Rabbit year, 1486).

Pic 8: The Florentine Codex (Book 12) depicts an Aztec ruler’s cremation in the ‘Cuauhxicalco’, right in front of the Templo Mayor

As Dr. López Luján explained (Pic 11) in his British Museum lecture, the Tlaltecuhtli monolith was found - just on the northern side of the Templo Mayor associated with Tlaloc - exactly where the historical record suggests are buried the ashes of Emperor Ahuítzotl.

Pic 10: Ahuítzotl dies in the year 10-Rabbit (1502), Codex Telleriano-Remensis, facsimile edition by Eloise Quiñones Keber, 1995, folio 41r

Tantalisingly, in recent weeks (June-July 2007) ground-breaking radar scans of the spot where the monolith was found have revealed up to 4 hollow chambers. Are archaeologists on the point of excavating the entrance to a royal tomb in the heart of Mexico City/Tenochtitlan...? As Dr. López Luján asked his audience to bear constantly in mind the fact that something like only 0.2% of the archaeological remains of Tenochtitlan have so far been excavated, we’re in for plenty more exciting finds...!

Pic 12: Plaque with an image of an ‘ahuízotl’, National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City