Meet the Mexica!

[Ares Land]

Mexica oriented themselves by facing East; the South is to the left.

Um, no? If you look East, the South is to the right…
(Sorry for picking the one nit I can find in your very informative post.)

Oh, that's right. Thanks for the correction, I fixed that.

[zompist]

[The multiple god do not contradict an outlook that feels, sometimes, almost monotheistic (Book V of the Florentine Codex, which concerns itself with ethics and politics refers often to Tezcatlipoca but mentions no other gods).

Possibly henotheistic rather than monotheistic. It's not uncommon in polytheism that you choose a particular god to focus on, or simply that while talking to them, you ignore all the rest. And accumulating a pantheon by syncretism is common too; it's notable how many Middle Eastern gods were originally chief god in one particular city.

Quetzalcōātl - Probably the god you're most likely to know!

Yes, though for whimsical reasons I always remember Tezcatlipoca— because tezcat.com, named for him, was my first ISP.

[Ares Land]

Possibly henotheistic rather than monotheistic. It's not uncommon in polytheism that you choose a particular god to focus on, or simply that while talking to them, you ignore all the rest. And accumulating a pantheon by syncretism is common too; it's notable how many Middle Eastern gods were originally chief god in one particular city.

Yep, about the same logic is at work here. Many gods are listed as the chief god of a particular people or city. The cause are probably similar: both Mesoamerica and Mesopotamia were places where distinct city-states and ethnic groups interacted.
(There are other interesting parallels. Both cultures told tales of people wandering, guided by their patron gods. Both cultures had flood myths. The idea of Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca battling a crocodile to shape Earth has a parallel with Marduk battling Tiamat.)

The Mexica pantheon has a particularly impressive roster of gods. To complicate matters, many of them are associated or identical to others (traditions varies), many are related, but in a symbolic, highly variable fashion (is Quetzalcoatl Mixcoatl's son or his brother? That depends on the kind of story you want to tell...)
So I won't try to mention them all. I'll try to provide a representative sample instead:

Some goddesses

Cihuācōātl (woman-snake) created humanity, along with Quetzalcoatl, by grinding the bones from a previous humanity, recovered from Mictlan. Sahagun's informants also blames her for forcing humans to work.
She would be heard at night wailing and weeping, an omen of war. She would also leave a crib in the market, with a flint sacrificial knife in it, as a pointed hint she was getting hungry for sacrifice. (In a legend she gave birth to a flint knife, which fell on Earth; the sparkles from the knife hitting the ground became gods. Oh, and of course it was the priests who left the crib lying around.)
cihuācōātl was also the name of the most important official after the king. (It was not uncommon to use the name of gods for civil or religious titles; we've already seen quetzalcoatl for 'high priest.')

She was associated with the cihuātēteoh (simply 'goddesses'), divinised women who died in childbirth or in sacrifice.

Chicōmecōātl 'Seven-snake', the goddess of food and harvest.

Teteoh īnnān 'Mother of the gods', or Tocih 'Our grandmother' or Tlālli īyōlloh 'Heart of the Earth'

The patron of physicians (specifically those who 'removed worms from the eyes or the teeth'. And you think you got problems), soothsayers and midwives (and also the patron of women who performed abortions.). Also called 'Grandmother of the baths', Temazcaltēcih. (The Mexica had steam baths, very similar to a sweat lodge. These were used regularly for washing but also in preparation for childbirth)

Tzapotlāntēnān 'The mother of Tzapotlan.' Tzapotlān is a neighbourhood in Tenochtitlan; it's also the name of a vassal state.
Patron of physicians, and the maker of turpentine. (Apparently the basis for several medicines.)

Chālchiuhtlicue 'Jade skirt.' The eldest of the water gods, the Tlaloque. Much feared and held in awe as the goddess of water. (Sahagun has an entertaining lists of the ways Chālchiuhtlicue/water can kill you.)
She was worshipped alongside Chicōmecōātl (food) and Huīxtohcihuātl (goddess of salt), all three essential to harvest and human sustenance.
An interesting expression for a drought: 'Chālchiuhtlicue is fasting.'

Tlazōlteōtl, the goddess of sin. An epithet of hers is īxcuina 'four-faced', because she's really four sisters, the tlazōltetēoh.
(When they don't come in pairs, the Mexica gods often were one of four siblings. Remember the four Tezcatlipocas, for instance.)
Another name is Tlahēlcuāni 'Eater of filth.', because she presided over a ritual, neyōlmelāhualiztli 'straightening of one's heart' which was, so to speak, a kind of confession. The goddess would eat, or wash away your sins. (As usual, a metaphorical kind of excrement or filth.)
The sinner would come to see a priest/soothsayer, who would take on the role of the goddess. Sahagun explains the ritual into some detail; confusingly the goddess is sort of forgotten midway, as the sinner really confesses to Tezcatlipoca.
A few differences from the Catholic ideas of confession: a) the penances are severe and sometimes painful (if your sins are particularly severe, be prepared to cut your tongue and pass stick of woods through the holes until you pass out) b) you only get to confess once in your life. If you sin again, no one will forgive you. c) it seems you got an amnesty from judicial pursuits (it took the Franciscan quite some time to figure that out after the conquest!)

Tonantzin 'Our Revered Mother' seems to have been the divine title of several goddesses. It seems possible that the Virgin of Guadalupe is an adaptation of a Tonantzin (which goddess, I do not know) -- her Apparition came within a few years of the conquest, near a former sanctuary.

Xōchiquetzal is the goddess of flower, song, dance, love, prostitutes and pregnant women. Her twin sister is Xōchipilli ( a xōchipilli is also a kind of priest),

More gods

Xipe Totec has, I think, a particularly fearsome name 'Our Lord the Flayed One.' If that was not enough, he had the additional title of Yohuallāhuāna 'He Who Drinks in the Night.'

Sacrifices to Xipe Totec involves flaying a sacrificial victim, and a priest wearing the captive skin as a coat until it decayed too much.
This may have been symbolic of maize germinating. The skins also had curative properties, and generally Xipe Totec will cure all sort of skin or eye infections.

The Mexica kings would dress as Xipe Totec in battle. I don't know the exact specifics but I'm inclined to assume the worst.

The Mexica thought Xipe Totec was a Zapotec, or possibly the Tlapanec.

Xipe Totec was, also, an aspect or a brother of Tezcatlipoca: the red Tezcatlipoca.

Mixcōātl 'Cloud Snake' is the same god as Xipe Totec, according to some interpretations. He was the patron deity of the Otomi, the Chichimecs.
Another of his name is Camaxtli and under this name he was the patron god of the Tlaxcallans. (To add some extra confusion, Camaxtli is likened to Huitzilopochtli. Possibly Camaxtli had a similar function among the Tlaxcallans.)

In legend, after the creation of the current sun, Mixcōātl created 400 barbarians, the Centzon Mīmixcōah, and five men to kill and sacrifice them to nourish the sun. The Centzon Mīmixcōah became the southern stars; human sacrifice rituals would reenact their sacrifice.
(Possibly the 400 Mīmixcōah kind of deserved their fate, having gotten drunk on wine instead of serving the gods.)

Mixcōātl is also the father of Quetzalcoatl, and the god of the hunt. (and, metaphorically, also war, war being a kind of hunt.)

There's a Nahuatl verb mazāpolihui 'to die like deer', the fate of those sacrificed to Mixcōātl.

Yacatecuhtli, 'Lord of the Nose', that is, 'Lord the Vanguard' the god of the merchants. The merchants would ceremoniously bathe and sacrifice slaves.

The Centzontōtōchtin '400 rabbits', gods of drunkenness, the children of Pahtēcatl and Māyahuel, the gods of pulque and the maguey plant.

Omācatl, '2 Reed', god of banquets. (Possibly Tezcatlipoca, the date 2 Reed being associated to him). Likely to dishonor you by placing hair in your food if you vexed him. (It's worth mentioning again that banquets were very serious affair, akin to a potlatch.)


Cinteōtl 'Maize god'. (Cintli is a ripe ear of maize, to be specific. Nahuatl has quite a wealth of maize-related vocabulary)
The god of maize, and patron of stonecutters. Green ears of corn are under the patronage of the goddess Xilonen.

A priest of Cinteōtl and Xilonen bears the title of cinteōtzin (honorific of cinteōtl)
is the son of Piltzintēuctli (god of Psilocybin mushrooms) and Xōchiquetzal.

Huēhuehteōtl 'Very Old God', the god of old age and fire; associated with the hearth, sacred in all of Mesoamerica. Also known as tēteoh īnnān, tēteoh īntah, huēhueh teōtl 'mother of gods, father of gods, old god'. Significantly overlaps with other fire gods (or may even be the same god): Xiuhtēuctli 'Lord Turquoise', Otontēuctli 'Otomi Lord'

Huēhuehcoyōtl 'Old Coyote'. A trickster coyote god, interestingly close to the Coyote trickster-god known from North America -- it's worth keeping in mind that the Nahuas came from the North.
(Also the title of a priest.)

Tlāltēuctli, the Lord of Earth. Some of my source assimilate him (or her) to Cipactli, the primeval crocodile from which Earth was fashioned. Fed, alongside the sun, with the blood from sacrifice and battlefields.

[Ares Land]

Rituals and human sacrifice

We now get to the difficult subject of human sacrifice. That's indeed not an easy subject, for several reasons.
First, and perhaps foremost, it's not for the faint of heart. Most of the descriptions are indeed pretty nightmarish.
For that reason I'm issuing a blanket content warning on the whole post.

The other reason is that we're faced with an intriguing paradox. The Mexica were in many ways admirable. Some will represent them as an utterly immoral people. But the evidence is that they had a strongly developed sense of moral and ethics -- and a very conventional one. Sahagun devotes two books to the Mexica's idea of morals -- and nothing is there feels alien or surprising. With the crucial exception of sacrifice, the Mexica saw as evil what we would see as evil, and as good what we would see as good.
The Franciscan friars that worked at converting them found them engaging -- and deplored senseless destruction on the conquistadores' parts. And in fact, the conquistadores themselves expressed sympathy and admiration, for the Mesoamericans. (Which, however, didn't stop them from raping everyone in sight and enslaving the survivors.)

And yet the Mexica engaged in fairly horrific rituals. It's tempting to assume they followed a Religion of Evil and leave at that... But, to be honest, the Mexica religion feels strange, foreign, unfamiliar... and yet, often very similar to other religions.
There are in fact, unmistakable resemblances with Christianity: it was widely assumed in the 16th century that the Mesoamericans had somehow been converted before being 'turned' by the devil.'
It's all very puzzling when you think about it.

You'll find plenty of people willing to demonize the Mexica; but there is, I feel, an opposite temptation to minimize, dismiss or excuse human sacrifice.
The painter Diego Rivera expressed outright admiration for human sacrifice. (He was Frida Kahlo's husband -- the shit that poor woman had to go through -- and possibly involved in Trotski's assassination.) Less dramatically, the number of victims has been largely minimized (while some figures are exaggerated, it was definitely as bad as they say it was).
In 1492, Charles C. Mann draws a comparison with our own history: yes, the Mexica had human sacrifice, we had the Holocaust, witch hunts and the inquisition. That's a fair rebuttal -- but we should keep in mind that the Mexica perpetrated massacres too (they would not balk at killing half a defeated city's population), had religious trials too. (They were more divided on the topic of witches. But they definitely killed the bad ones.)

Why sacrifice humans?
So we're left with the paradox of a culture, admirable in many respect that engaged in very regular bloody ritual. Why is that?

There can be no answer to that question. What we have is descriptive: we know the main gods, how they were represented, and a description of the sacrifices themselves. What we can't have is theology, or what sacrifice meant or represented. The Mexica priests were able to mount a very eloquent defense; it's very likely they had very elaborate theology. All of this was, of course, lost. We don't know what sacrifice meant to them.

We can offer some hypotheses though.

Everyone does it

The first thing to note is that pretty all cultures engaged in human sacrifice at one point or another in their history. The Egyptians did it, the Romans did it, the Greeks did it, the Chinese did it.. You get the idea.
Two forms seem to me to be especially common: human sacrifice in the foundation of new buildings (this is attested in Europe at very late date) and retainer sacrifice (the king's dependant join him in the afterlife). Both were practiced by the Mexica, btw. Child sacrifices was practiced in Carthage; the Romans insisted they would nothing so barbarous as sacrifice humans (except when they did, in which case it didn't count.) If you have any Germanic or Celtic ancestry, your ancestors definitely sacrificed humans.
Yet, the Mexica stand out, first because they never abandoned the practice, more importantly because of the importance of the ritual (check the calendar above; a month never goes by without sacrifice of some kind) and the sheer number of victims.

Ecological reasons

In 1977, Michael Harner looked into the subject and proposed ecological factors were at work. This was popularized soon after by Marvin Harris, notably in Cannibals and Kings.

A key point: the sacrificial victims weren't just killed. The head was exposed on a skull rack; the trunk fed to the animals in the zoo. The heart was kept in a vase, the blood sprinkled over the temple. But the limbs were butchered, cooked and eaten.

On another note, there was a general dearth of animal protein in the Mexico valley. The valley boasted a very large population, and yet the Mesoamericans had no large domesticated animals. They were constantly short on meat. Animal protein isn't strictly necessary; but human beings tend to crave it (among other reasons, it's very nutritious, packing a lot of calories in a very small volume.) At some point, people who crave meat -- and who are generally hungry all the time -- will tend to look at their neighbours in a certain manner.

Harner and Harris don't propose that the entire population of the Valley of Mexico would feed on human meat. The problems with that approach are obvious. On the other hand, human meat would work very well as redistribution: the leaders of the community using it to reward key members of the community.
Indeed, human sacrifice was always sanctioned by the state, or the local lord in smaller community. The spoils of it went to warriors, important merchants, as redistributive banquets, under state/chiefdom patronage. It all makes sense.

So it seems we have a solid explanation. Except all scholarly works about the Mexica dismiss it.
It's too simplistic, the argument goes. They couldn't have fed everyone on it. And besides the Mexica had plenty of protein.

I'd like to speak in favor of the Harris-Harner thesis, though. It seems very convincing to me. A few points:

• The Mexica didn't have plenty of protein. They could rely on turkey and dogs -- but these compete with human beings for food. (Cattle is more efficient: we can't digest what they eat.) There was game: deer and rabbits -- but population density in the valley of Mexico exceeded 1,000 people per square mile! There were fish, frogs and other amphibians from the lake -- again, not nearly enough compared to the density.
• And indeed the Mexica went through terrible famines. One of these provided the initial impulse for the Flower Wars -- more ritual sacrifice. Prayers to Tezcatlipoca include ghastly descriptions of famine, an hint that the memory of famine was quite vivid. People were still going hungry at the end of the dry season. It even looks at times like the Mexica taught themselves, deliberately to endure hunger. The fasts were frequents and arduous, small children were taught to make do with one (1!) tortilla a day.
• Human flesh was evidently the main perk of the warrior, at least if the conquistadores' reports is to be trusted. Cortéz' allies were very eager to eat the defeated, to the understandable dismay of the Spaniards. The Mexica taunted their enemies about it.

Political reasons and, by the way, was it the Mexica who came up with human sacrifice?

Human sacrifice is as old as civilization in Mesoamerica. It does look like the Mexica brought the practice to an unprecedented scale.
To some extent this is a factor of the power and wealth of the Mexica state -- human sacrifice is expensive, not something a small community or a minor altepetl could engage in large-scale. The Mexica, on the other hand, had the resources for mass-scale sacrifice.
There is a political, empire-building aspect to it, though.
First: it's a very efficient terror tactic. The pyramids were built so that what took place on top of them could be seen from afar. The Spaniards could testify to it; Bernal Diaz del Castillo has an harrowing chapter where he watched Spanish soldiers being sacrificed, from the lakeshores.
In addition, the Mexica would invite rival and vassal kings to witness the ceremonies; these presumably returned home suitably chastened. The Flower Wars were "only" ritual wars, waged only for religious reasons... and served the very practical purpose of bleeding the Mexica's rivals dry. Vassal states were required to provide captives for sacrifice, as part of their tribute; again, weakening them. And of course many of the rituals were designed to impress, from the dispatching of the captives on top of the temples to the exposure of their skulls on dedicated skull racks.
The personal enjoyment of the rulers mustn't be ruled out either. The Mexica went through heavy religious reforms under the direction of the cihuacoatl Tlacaelel, who greatly expanded the cult of Huitzilopochtli and introduced the Flower Wars... and is said to have had a taste for human flesh.

Religious and symbolic reasons.
In Mexica thought, the sacrifices were a necessary part of running the universe. The sun required to be fed with blood; in any case the sacrifices were necessary to have it run its course. This is not necessarily a case of the gods being blood-thirsty (though they can be portrayed that way) but more a matter of the universe running on sacrifice, and everything requiring a price.

The gods aren't exempt either. The mythological monster Cipactli has to be sacrificed and shapen as the earth; to soothe its pains victims must be provided. As we've seen earlier, two gods must sacrifice themselves to become the Sun and the Moon, but all of the other gods must be sacrificed for the Sun to run its course.
There's a kind of supernatual one-upmanship about human sacrifice. In one myth, Quetzalcoatl is required to offer a sacrifice; he's expected to offer something suitable, a jaguar, maybe. Quetzalcoatl subverts all expectations by offering humans instead.

An interesting theme is that the Mexica gods have sacrificed themselves so that mankind could exist. As we've seen, Quetzalcoatl recreated the human race from blood: this was accompanied by self-sacrificed, as the god spilled its blood so that humans could be revived.

Other justification include the payment of a cosmic debt, or even redemption from sin. Sometimes it's presented as a trade of sorts: human victims versus rain, sustenance or victory. People who escaped from a disaster, or who recovered from a disease, vowed to offer a sacrifice as thanksgiving.
Sacrifices would be offered as penance, for thanksgiving after a victory, to placate the gods after defeat.

Serving the gods -- other forms of sacrifice.

Human sacrifice was important. But maybe it wasn't the most important to serve the gods.
My own opinion is that the most important act in Mexica religion was a different kind of sacrifice: self-sacrifice, or penance.

All rituals -- including offering a victims -- required penance and mortification of some kind.
One kind of penance was offering your own blood: cutting a part of your body (often, the ears, sometimes, more painful places) with small blades or cactus spines to draw blood, to offer to the gods. This could be done in spectacular and painful ways.

Fasting was of the utmost importance. They were sometimes long and arduous. We know some of the specifics, but not in detail. A fast meant abstaining from food (what the exact rules were, I do not know. But sometimes a fast could last for a year, so evidently penants didn't abstain from food entirely.) and sexual intercourse. Penants would cover themselves with soot or rubber.
Fasting was often not done at home; instead people undergoing fasts would go to a dedicated house.

(This was especially true of the sovereign. Mexica kings, and especially Motecuhzoma are depicted as extremely pious. Motecuhzoma II was constantly fasting, doing penances and spending time in prayer. The royal nezahualcalli 'house of fasting' could be palatial and luxurious!)

When undergoing fasts, penants would either refrain from bathing entirely, or on the contrary bathe ritually. Bathing at midnight was apparently a very pious and important act.

Everyone was expected to participate in penances -- including babies, from whom blood was drawn on some occasions. But the professional penants were of course the priests, constantly cutting themselves and undertaking severe fasts.

Again the meaning of all the cutting and fasting is lost to us. It's perhaps not great mystery: both were practiced in many religions -- harsh penances and cutting were once practiced in Europe too.

Amaranth substitutes

We've compared sacrifice to communion in this thread; and we aren't the first ones to do so! But there are closer analogues.

Several ceremonies involved fashioning images of amaranth paste. These 'cakes' were then ritually killed and eaten, as a subsitute.
In particular, the god Huiztilopochtli was eaten that way. Eating the god required severe preparation, including one year of fasting.

During other ceremonies, images of the 'mountains' (symbolic of the gods) were made out of amaranth paste and eaten.

The image, or representation of the god is his or her īxiptlah, his representatives, his substitute. Keep this notion in mind; it will come up again and seems essential to the Mexica notion of sacrifice.

Song and dance

Possibly the kind of offering you were most likely to make -- and one of the aspects of Nahua religion that the Spaniards found hardest to eradicates.

All the ceremonies were accompanied by songs and dances. Some lyrics have been preserved; one of these mention the song is an offering to 'Him by whom we live.'

Incense and flowers

Both were offered to the gods: Flowers were highly prized in Mexica culture; the incense used include copal (a fossilized resin) or even tobacco. In Mexica codices, priests can be represented by their incense bag.

Animal sacrifice

Animal sacrifice was acceptable and at times necessary. The most common victims were quails. Deer were also sacrificed and, on occasion, jaguars.

Who were the human victims?

War captives. We know about these. These offer us an interesting clue:
'The captor could not eat the flesh of his captive. He said “Shall I perchance eat my very self?” For when he took the captive, he had said: “He is my beloved son.” And the captive had said: “He is my beloved father.”’
The war captive is assimilated to his captor, somehow (to what extent? we do not know.)

Captives were killed atop the pyramid; sometimes they were engaged in mock battles. During Tlācaxīpēhualiztli ('Flaying of Human beings') captives were killed in gladiatoral combat.
Typically captive warriors had mock weapons, their opponents wielded the real thing.
Supposedly a captive, one Tlahuicoleh actually won the mock battle. The king offered to set him free; instead Tlahuicoleh demanded he be sacrificed anyway.

Women
Many rituals demanded that women be sacrificed. Roughly, goddesses got female victims, gods got male ones -- but there are exceptions.
These could be war captives (the Mexica could be cruel to defeated civilians) or slaves.

Children
Sacrifices to Tlaloc required children. They were chosen according to certain signs; in particular, having two locks of hair on the head. Generally it seems they were often bought for their parents. Pretty sickeningly, it seems there always were plenty of children on offer. (Perhaps an other sign that everyone was really hungry?)
Apparently recent research suggests the sacrificed children were probably already very sick. (I don't know if that's very conclusive.)

Slaves

The other main sources of victims were slaves. Offering a victim was essentially done by two main categories: soldiers and merchants. The latter would offer slaves. These were bought for the purpose and ritually bathed.
Slaves could be war captives, or people who sold themselves off in slavery (it was, often, debt slavery.)

Criminals
We know a practice of sacrificing certain criminals existed in Mesoamerica. It's quite possible the Mexica did too, but I haven't got much on that topic.

I should also mention volunteers. There were apparently a few of these.

īxiptlah

What stands out from the description of the ceremonies is that, often, the god -- or goddess -- would be sacrificed herself/himself. Of course the one who died was a human substitute (īxiptlah.)

These were treated very well; the substitute of Tezacatlipocah lived, essentially, as a king for a year. He would walk the streets, be cheered as a god incarnate, smoke cigars and play the flute, be granted four concubines (each bearing the name of a goddess until the month of Toxcatl (the most important of the holidays.)
Sometimes substitutes begged for and received alms. (We don't know what became of the alms.)

Apparently, divine substitute had to be natives -- foreign slaves or captives would not do.

A great honor; facing death with dignity

You may have heard the idea that being a sacrificial victim was a great honor. Yes and no. On one hand, it was not a dishonorable fate; the victim gained access to the more enviable afterlife.
One the other hand, being sacrificed was listed as an unfortunate fate, associated to the days of ill-omen in the descriptions of the ritual calendar. It seems your average Mexica was happy with someone else getting the honor.

It seems victims would generally face their fate with fatalism and dignity. It wasn't necessarily the case: we know victims sometimes had to be prevented from fainting. Others essentially wasted away with worry while in detention.

Victims could generally expect to be well treated. 'Treated like a bathed slaves' is used in the sense of 'spoiled, pampered'. The victims could also be helped with drugs or alcohol. In one case, some kind of anaesthetic was used.

That said, on large occasions (thousands were sacrificed for the dedication of the Templo Mayor) it's probable the victims were handled pretty roughly.

The scene

Religious ceremonies were designed with an eye to the spectacular. It was a square, fortified complex, some 400 meters by 300, near the centre of Tenochtitlan.
The main building was the great pyramid: composed of four sloped terraces with a passage between each level, topped by a great platform; two stairways reached the top. On the top platform were two temples: the temple of Huitzilopochtli and the one of Tlaloc.
Both were, the Spaniards report, caked with blood. Out of politeness, Motecuhzomah offered to add a Christian sanctuary, to the considerable consternation of his guests. (I don't remember if they accepted the proposition. They did on similar occasions, believe it or not.)

Victims would be sacrificed on one of the two sacrificial stones. The victim would lie down; a stone collar made sure victims wouldn't move or cry out. The priest would open the chest with a flint knife; an obsidian knife would be used to cut the head. (The head was probably cut awkwardly.) Then the body would be rolled down the stairs, and taken to be butchered.

Who officiated? A priest of course. Priest would train on dummies for the occasion; they would at least on occasion be drunk, or taking drunk: novice priests could be understandably hesitant.
On certain occasion we know the king officiated himself, as well as the cihuacoatl. (Motecuhzoma officiated himself while hosting/taken hostage by Cortéz, to the considerable embarassment of both parties.)

The Mesoamerican pyramid is, essentially, a platform for ceremonies, writ large, with everything designed so that everyone could have a good look.
(As we saw, Diaz del Castillo could witness sacrifices by the lakeshore.)

Depending on the occasion, the priest could himself be a representative of the god, and wear divine regalia. Sometimes ritual dances were performed with the head of the victim.

The skull ended on display on a large, impressive, tree-like, skull rack called a tzompantli (the etymology is unclear. it could have been named for a tree, or possibly for the shrike.)
It's not clear what the meaning of the rack was. It could have been a memento mori of a kind, reminding everyone that life was fleeting. The tree shape could hint as reborn. Or, you know, it was just there to impress. (In any case, it wasn't a Mexica invention. There already were some at Teotihuacan).

The pyramid also represents a mountain. (Maybe you remember that 'city' in Nahuatl is in atl, in tepetl 'the water, the mountain': the 'mountain' here is the pyramid.)

The ceremonial complex of the Templo Mayor included 73 buildings: shrine, sanctuaries, religious colleges, a ritual basin, even a garden.
Sacrifices could take place in other temples in the city, or outside city limits. Some children were sacrificed on Mount Tlaloc. The death of a victim wasn't always public: for instance, Tezactlipoca's impersonator took a long trek outside the city, breaking his flutes along the way, and was killed in a secluded place.

[Ares Land]

Well, as the Mexica would have said, ye īxquich 'that is all.'

That's about all I got -- there's certainly a lot more to cover but I think I reached and stretched the limits of what I know and can confidently talk about.

Before leaving, though, I can provide some recommended reading if you want more:

In French
Many of my sources are, unfortunately, in French. Still, I should mention them as they were indispensable references: Jacques Soustelle, Les Aztèques, Michel Graulich's Montezuma and Le sacrifice humain chez les Aztèques, Jacqueline de Durand-Forest's Les Aztèques and Pratiques religieuses et divinatoires des Aztèques. All of these are excellent.

Other Sources
If you want only one book, get Miguel Léon-Portilla's Aztec Thought and Culture which is the seminal text on the subject. A great introduction to Nahuatl philosophy, with lots of quotes from native sources.
I've enjoyed Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs.
On Aztec cannibalism, and generally on the complex interesection between human beings, their environments and religion: Marvin Harris' Cannibals and Kings.
Understanding Early Civilizations by Bruce Trigger is excellent and full of detail, not only on the Aztec but on a selection of world civilization. It can also be used as a blunt weapon. Don't drop it on your foot. It's also extremely dry, so excellent if you suffer from insomnia.
https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/ is aimed to younger readers, I think, but it's an excellent resource nonetheless.
Wikipedia has a lot of information, but it's sort of disappointing there. I'm sad to report that most of the relevant articles must be double or triple-checked before use.

Primary sources
Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas was written in 1530, probably after indigenous codices. About as close to a direct testimony as we're going to get. It's also availabe online here: http://www.famsi.org/research/christen ... index.html
The Florentine Codex, or General History of the Things of New Spain is a truly wonderful resource. A Franciscan friar, Bernardino de Sahagún compiled an encyclopedic reference of Nahua life in the late 16th century, based on native testimonies (apparently, elderly local aristocrats), it's written in Nahuatl with a Spanish translation by Sahagun himself.
A translation from the Nahuatl was made by Anderson & Dibble. Your best bet is an academic library. (You can get it from Amazon, but for a price. And quite a price.) FWIW, the Spanish translation can be found here: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k ... rk=21459;2 and here: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k ... rk=42918;4
You can check out the Codex Telleriano-Remensis: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b ... rk=21459;2, a native Codex made in the early 16th century. I can't read the annotations in Spanish or understand the pictogram, but I can always look at the pictures. (Frankly, the colors alone are something to look at) I've been using a page from it as a Zoom background and let me tell you, those meetings are short and to the point now.

Bernal Díaz del Castillo's Conquest of New Spain is a testimony from one of Cortéz's soldiers. An excellent resource, but keeping in mind the author sometimes misremembered and often didn't understand anything of what he saw. It also functions as a grimdark epic tale: the Mexica are scary, the Spanish boorish, cruel and stupid, and the whole thing makes George R.R. Martin look like Dr Seuss.

The Popol Vuh is Maya, of course. (Quiché to be specific.) But the Quiché had much contact with the Nahuas, they also claimed descent from 'Tollan' (the Tollan they meant was probably Chichen Itza, though). Even the language is peppered with Nahuatl borrowings. The specifics are different, of course, but the overall worldview isn't far off. Plus, leaving the historical interest aside, it's great literature.
This translation is the most accurate, I think: https://www.mesoweb.com/publications/Ch ... polVuh.pdf. You can also find an interlinear translation, also by Christenson, for a feel of how a Mayan language works.

Nahuatl
If you want a good look into an American language, or a polysynthetic language, you could do worse than Nahuatl. It's very well documented, resources are pretty easy to find. It's also a comparatively accessible language. (I don't know what to think of the 'oligosynthetic' concept, but Nahuatl tends to build words as compound of relatively few roots; it's quite noticeable.)

The best grammar there is, I think, is Michel Launey's Introduction to Classical Nahuatl.
I use this online dictionary: http://sites.estvideo.net/malinal/nahuatl.page.html
It's an excellent French-Nahuatl dictionary, with references, quotes for everything, etymologies when available and additional cultural data. Unfortunately, well, it's French-Nahuatl.
This English-Nahuatl dictionary: https://nahuatl.uoregon.edu/ seems very good. But I haven't used it as much.

Fiction
This all started with my reading Gary Jennings' Aztec. But, to be honest, I have come to have mixed feelings about it.
On the plus side, it's engaging, very-well written, and very accurate in places. On the other hand, it is somehow spoiled by the endless sex scenes (these range from awkwarkd to cringe to fairly disgusting.) which make no sense in context (the Mexica were not weird sex maniacs.) His picture of Mexica religion is generally completely wrong. For some reason, he also felt the need to make human sacrifice even more horrific than it actually was. (I don't know why you need to add horrific detail to a holiday called The Flaying of Human Beings, but apparently Jennings felt the original wasn't over the top enough.)
I did like Aliette de Bodard's Obsidian and Blood series a lot more, and have only a few minor nitpicks.

Okay, that's it. Thanks for reading this. And if you ever hear the sound of an axe in the middle of the night, now you know what to do.

[circeus]

The best grammar there is, I think, is Michel Launey's Introduction to Classical Nahuatl.
I use this online dictionary: http://sites.estvideo.net/malinal/nahuatl.page.html
It's an excellent French-Nahuatl dictionary, with references, quotes for everything, etymologies when available and additional cultural data. Unfortunately, well, it's French-Nahuatl.
This English-Nahuatl dictionary: https://nahuatl.uoregon.edu/ seems very good. But I haven't used it as much.

If you can read it in French, Launey's work can be bought in PDF format here: https://www.editions-harmattan.fr/index ... re&no=3084

Mind you it's not a very good pdf, or at least the version I have is not (text search is iffy. Honestly I wish they'd just converted it to a more legible font!), but you're not likely to find it in any other format so easily available, I suspect (the original edition is from 1979 and I'm fairly sure the 1995 "edition" was not printed but refers to the pdf). The Spanish language version is in PDF here: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/prisons/Launey_1992.pdf. I vaguely recall Magnus (our resident nahuatl expert) saying the translation is of poor quality, though I might be misremembering and I haven't seen it for comparison.

The English version (of which I have no first- or second-hand knowledge) is from 2011 at Cambridge University Press: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511778001

[hwhatting]

@Ares: Just wanted to say thank you for that great series of posts.
I don't know if Ephemera still gets pruned, but maybe it's worth moving this to Languages in order to preserve it?

[Raphael]

A very belated question: I think I remember that long ago on the old ZBB, someone - I don't remember his name, but I think he was a Dane who had moved to Mexico - claimed to have learned that, for many Mexica who were not part of the upper class, the Spanish Conquest was a lot less of a change than it is generally thought to have been - they kept a lot of their culture, traditions, and way of life, and "only" saw their traditional ruling class replaced with Spaniards. What do you make of that interpretation of things?

[Travis B.]

A very belated question: I think I remember that long ago on the old ZBB, someone - I don't remember his name, but I think he was a Dane who had moved to Mexico - claimed to have learned that, for many Mexica who were not part of the upper class, the Spanish Conquest was a lot less of a change than it is generally thought to have been - they kept a lot of their culture, traditions, and way of life, and "only" saw their traditional ruling class replaced with Spaniards. What do you make of that interpretation of things?

You mean Radagast?

[Raphael]

Possible - I don't know.

[Ares Land]

A very belated question: I think I remember that long ago on the old ZBB, someone - I don't remember his name, but I think he was a Dane who had moved to Mexico - claimed to have learned that, for many Mexica who were not part of the upper class, the Spanish Conquest was a lot less of a change than it is generally thought to have been - they kept a lot of their culture, traditions, and way of life, and "only" saw their traditional ruling class replaced with Spaniards. What do you make of that interpretation of things?

Immediately post-Conquest, the Spaniards did keep a lot of the existing institutions and essentially replaced the native upper class. There really was no other way to go about it anyway: there were a few hundeds Spaniards and millions of native Americans. They even coopted some of the local nobility. (Several of our chroniclers: Ixtlilxóchitl, Chimalpahin, Tezozomoc were descendants of local royalty.)

However, the Conquest itself was extraordinarily destructive. Add to that the smallpox epidemics.

And then, on top of all that; well, the conquistadores were thugs, notably cruel and incompetent. There were very enthusiastic over enslaving those natives who wouldn't cooperate, and then working them to deaths.
They probably required a lot more in the way of tribute than the Mexica elite did. One hint that their rule was extremely disruptive is that decrees protecting native slaves eventually had to be issued; plus they increasingly imported African slaves to supplement the dwindling native populations.

They weren't terribly competent as rules either: at some point they got the bright idea of felling down most of the trees in the valley of Mexico and draining the lakes. (Mexico City has been prone to devastating floods to this day.)

So it depends. Mostly Spanish rule was extremely destructive; but given the difficult nature of the terrain and the population imbalance, it's quite likely there were many places where commoners were left alone.

[Raphael]

Thank you!

[Man in Space]

Ares Land, would you have any interest in retooling this excellent thread into a sort of Mesoamerica Construction Kit? I would be interested in the results of such a project.

[Ares Land]

Thanks for the interest! At some point, I'd like to put up a website with content from this thread -- and a few others of my threads I'm happy with.

[Raholeun]

Read this thread when I was sick in bed and it was a joy. Thanks, A.L.

[Rad Aghast]

Possible - I don't know.

Sounds like something I would say. Since it's pretty much true. A little oversimplified perhaps, but the Spanish colonial system maintained the altepetls as "repúblicas de indios", with their own cabildo functioning pretty much as the precolonial government did.

[Ares Land]

Read this thread when I was sick in bed and it was a joy. Thanks, A.L.

Glad you liked it!

[So Haleza Grise]

I searched the thread and I couldn't find it mentioned, so I thought I would mention J. Richard Andrews' very comprehensive grammar of Classical Nahuatl. I bought it online, can't remember how much I paid for it but it was expensive. But the main barrier wasn't so much the price as the very baroque way he uses his own terminology to emphasise how different from Spanish and English Nahautl is (for example, he doesn't use the terms "noun" or "verb"). To an extent I think emphasising this distinction is justified, but it's very hard to follow the intricacies of his home-brew grammatical system that he's trying to teach you at the same time as you are learning the language. I found Launey's book easier but also got the vague hunch that it was less accurate and less detailed.

[Ares Land]

Oh, I thought I had mentioned it! I'm basically in agreement with you, but I really can't deal with Andrews' idiosyncratic system.

Launey wrote a detailed analysis of omnipredicativity; sadly that book is long out of print.

The idea is that Nahuatl allows both nouns and verbs in predicate position; for an interesting look at how that works, you can check out that paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... 8/download

[Rad Aghast]

I found Launey's book easier but also got the vague hunch that it was less accurate and less detailed.

It is perhaps less detailed, but by no means less accurate (he just doesnt write with the stilted assertive style Andrews does to prop himself up as an authority). And if you like a more detailed version his 1600 page grammar in French is still online, I believe - by far the most detailed and accurate single work ever written on Nahuatl.