Templo Mayor Museum: Place for human sacrifices
On December 19, 1487, the sixth Great Temple of Tenochtitlan was dedicated. A modern head of state or religious leader would never expect to see such a ceremony. Eagle-themed warriors stood watch along the path leading to a regal, tiered pyramid. Drums have a fascinating rhythm to them. Men who were nearly naked held hands and sang. There was a celebratory vibe also menacing.
Prisoners of war were brought to the top of the pyramid’s steep steps, which led to two shrines, during the ceremony’s culmination. High priests holding the victims down cut open their abdomens with ceremonial knives as their still-beating hearts were lifted to the spirits above and the throng below in the holy enclosure.
The dead bodies of the sacrificed were then kicked down the stairs, their blood flowing bright red against the white of the temple walls as they were done one after another. Over the course of the four days leading up to the inauguration ceremony, some 4,000 prisoners were executed in order to appease the Aztec gods and possibly to terrify anyone who dared to contemplate opposing this terrifying yet alluring American power.
Approximately five years before Christopher Columbus and his expedition sailed from Spain for what they believed to be India and ended up being a “new world” on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, this is what occurred in what is now Mexico City just before Christmas in 1487.
The origins of the famous seven tribes of the Aztecs are still a mystery, and Europeans at the time knew nothing about them. It’s possible that in the late 11th century, individuals from California came to Mexico under the names Tenochla and Mexica. What is known is that they arrived in the Valley of Mexico and established Tenochtitlan, their metropolis, around 1325 on a swampy island. This shielded them from foes in a foreign land, similar to Venice. Tenochtitlan was also erected on wooden pilings down well below the surface of the sea, much like Venice, and it too developed into a city of canals, magnificent structures, elaborate festivals, imperial ambition, and mystery.
Aztecs lavished money on religious structures. Their gods were ferocious and required human blood and hearts to satisfy them. Soon after Tenochtitlan was established, construction of the main temple—known as Templo Mayor in Spanish or Huei Teocalli in Nahuatl—began. Before the arrival of the conquistador Hernán Cortés in 1519, it had to be rebuilt six times. Its size increased with each rebuild. However, it still maintained its basic shape, which was an impressive, stepped pyramid with twin stairs leading to the sanctuaries of the gods Huitzilopochtli (god of war) and Tlaloc (god of rain and fertility). Faced this main building was a lower circular temple dedicated to the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl, who predated the Aztecs.
The Aztec king Ahuitzotl had doubled the size of his dominion by 1497, when the sixth temple was finished. The world of the Aztecs, with its logical city design, advanced sanitation, running water, daily baths, imposing temples, and ravenous human sacrifice, looked destined to last for all time.
However, the seventh and last reconstruction of the Templo Mayor was what Hernán Cortés witnessed in 1519, having just arrived from Cuba and during the reign of the Aztec king Moctezuma. Cortés witnessed something undoubtedly spectacular. This was the largest of 78 structures in the sacred area at the centre of Tenochtitlan, according to the Spaniards’ own descriptions.
A Franciscan priest named Bernardino de Sahagun caught a sight of the idol of Huitzilopochtli from behind a curtain in one of the shrines. It was constructed up of seeds bound together with honey and human blood. At a festival that culminated in them eating this representation of their god of the sun and war, the idol was displayed to the people every year while wearing lovely garments and a gold crown.
Cortés was fascinated by these encounters, Tenochtitlan’s enormous size (it had a population of over 250,000, making it larger than any city in modern Europe), and its abundant gold reserves. Despite their powerful eagle warriors and bloodthirsty gods, the Aztecs were easily defeated by Spanish cunning, weapons, and sickness. Initially welcomed as Quetzalcoatl himself, Cortés cut an astonishingly simple and merciless route through the Aztecs. Upon learning of a plot to retaliate, Pedro de Alvarado, his second in command, ordered his soldiers capture thousands of unarmed Aztec nobility during a religious ceremony and execute them.
And with it, the Aztec Empire, Moctezuma, Tenochtitlan, and the Templo Mayor all came to an end. The remaining Aztecs were driven from their city, which the conquistadors later destroyed. Many of the Aztecs who were spared the sword perished from smallpox imported from Spain. On top of what had been the Templo Mayor and its holy enclosure, a Catholic cathedral was erected.
Life continued as Mexico expanded out of New Spain. Aztec gods and civilization were all but lost, as were Tenochtitlan and the Templo Mayor. Early excavations conducted by the eminent Mexican archaeologist Leopold Batres in the late 19th century were cursory, and subsequent excavations conducted between then and World War Two were viewed by those residing in the opulent residential streets of this central area of Mexico City as little more than a nuisance. Only in the last quarter of the 20th century did the site really start to spark public interest and rigorous investigation.
A massive, eight-ton sculptured stone disc showing the dispersed limbs of the Aztec moon deity Coyolxauhqui was discovered in 1978 by construction workers. An executive order allowed the archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma and his crew to glean everything they could about the temple. This included the contentious demolition of colonial homes, but hundreds of Aztec artefacts were discovered, inspiring the creation of the Templo Mayor Museum, a modernist masterpiece by Mexican architect Pedro Ramrez Vázquez that incorporated pre-Columbian features.
The search for the Templo Mayor is still ongoing today, and the area has been listed a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Many things have been found, including early 14th century temple layers and portions, palace apartments with built-in bathrooms, the House of the Eagle Warriors, a priest training facility, and beautiful sculptures of writhing sacred snakes and serpents.
Even so, there are still countless riches hidden beneath the structures, monuments, and cathedrals of modern-day Mexico City, along with the intriguing tale of a people, a culture, and a faith that seemed to vanish in an instant in the early 16th Century. This means that, although innovation and new archaeological techniques will undoubtedly be helpful in the future, our understanding of the Aztecs will unfortunately remain inadequate for a very long time. Folklore aside, memory is insufficient to retain the worlds of Ahuitzotl, Moctezuma, Tenochtitlan, and the frightening ceremonies that were performed in and around the Templo Mayor 500 years ago. The Aztec people still exist, but their faces fade into the crowds of Mexico City.
