u/WingsovDeth

https://codicemendoza.inah.gob.mx

Didn't see this posted before, but it's been live since 2015. Still maybe the best digital presentation of a pictorial codex to date? The 16th century Spanish glosses can be easily viewed in both Spanish and English.

Mexica-Tenochca tradition has it that Moteuczoma Xocoyotzin ordered the construction of a new house to hold the images of foreign deities captured in war. This place--variously referred to as Coacalco, Coatcocalli, and Coatlan--is sometimes described as a temple and other times as a shrine located within the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan and protected with bars "like a prison."

Once completed, it was said that 780 captives from the rebelling province of Teuctepec were sacrificed personally by Moteuczoma and his Cihuacoatl to consecrate it.

However, the idea of collecting or "capturing" gods from neighboring or enemy cities has a long history in pre-Hispanic Mexico. In his research into Texcoco, the mestizo historian Juan Bautista Pomar credits Nezahualcoyotl as the first to collect "idols" from various parts of all the neighborhoods of the city.

Warfare was often a game of "capture of the God."

The Annals of Cuauhtitlan preserves a story of how groups employed decoys to protect their deity's true image or teixiptla in case of attack.

The famous Tizoc Stone and Stone of Montezuma I also portray scenes of conquest where the Mexica ruler, dressed in the clothing of the god Huitzilopochtli, holds the god of the conquered city captive.

According to the Dominican friar Diego Duran, several years before the arrival of the Spaniards Moteuczoma had tried and failed repeatedly to steal the god Camaxtli from Huexotzinco.

Sometimes, even the entire priesthood of a vanquished altepetl was transported with the god's image to Tenochtitlan.

This practice may also be reflected in the mythological stories where gods appropriate the clothing and insignia of their defeated foes.

In the above image, taken from the Florentine Codex, Moteuczoma is pictured in front of the Coacalco--indicated by a serpent (coatl) glyph for the word's prefix--receiving his emissaries who inform him of the iron-clad strangers who have arrived on the Gulf Coast. As scholars Rebecca Dufendach and Jeanette Peterson discuss, the depiction of the sovereign receiving the news here at the place where foreign gods are "imprisoned" may be meant to suggest the Spanish will meet a similar fate.

**References**

Alvarado Tezozómoc, F. de. (2001). Crónica mexicana (G. Díaz Migoyo & G. Vázquez Chamorro, Eds.). Dastin.

Bierhorst, J. (Trans.). (1992). History and mythology of the Aztecs: The Codex Chimalpopoca. University of Arizona Press.

Declercq, S. J. L. J. (2018). In mecitin inic tlacanacaquani: “Los mecitin (mexicas) comedores de carne humana”: Canibalismo y guerra ritual en el México antiguo (Doctoral dissertation, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México).

Dufendach, R., & Peterson, J. (2022). Folios alterados, historias alternativas en el Códice Florentino. Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 64, 63–107. https://doi.org/10.22201/iih.30618002e.2022.64.78093

Durán, D. (1971). Book of the gods and rites and The ancient calendar (F. Horcasitas & D. Heyden, Trans. & Eds.). University of Oklahoma Press.

Durán, D. (1994). The history of the Indies of New Spain (D. Heyden, Trans., Annot., & Intro.). University of Oklahoma Press.

Garibay K., Á. M. (1964). Poesía náhuatl (Vol. 1). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas.

López Austin, A., & López Luján, L. (2017). State ritual and religion in the sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan. In D. L. Nichols & E. Rodríguez-Alegría (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of the Aztecs (pp. 605–622). Oxford University Press.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy_j49zjmDQ

The great temple of Tlatelolco as pictured in the Codex Azcatitlan, mid-17th Century.

This page, opposite the coronation of the elder Moteuczoma, shows several episodes highlighting the role of Tenochtitlan's partners in his wars of expansion. Tlatelolco's place-name glyph is shown at the pyramid's base, on which is also superimposed a temple and the glyph for the town of Chalca Atenco. To its left are Chalca captives wearing the quauhcozcatl or slave collar attached to ropes. They are held prisoner by Nezahualcoyotl, ruler of Texcoco.

To the captives' right is a fire drill referring to the Toxhiuhmolpilia or binding of years ceremony of Moteuczoma's reign in 1455. At the top right this ceremony is also shown celebrated at Chalco Atenco and the town of Acolman. Below the two smaller temples two men lie dead with one--connected to the temple by a line--possibly a Chalca lord. Underneath them is shown the death of Tlatelolco's tlatoani Cuauhtlahtoa, who is succeeded by Moquihuix, leader of the city until the Mexica civil war of 1473.

The European influenced three-dimensional style of the temple stands out in this codex more than others. Its prominence here and in earlier scenes where it is shown both in the mythical homeland of Aztlan and constructed in Mexico before Tenochtitlan's together with the coronation of the Tlatelolco's first tlatoani--otherwise described in detail only in the city's famous annals--and the attention it pays to local episodes while illustrating the conquest, have been used to argue the book originated there.

Whereas some scholars have seen the Azcatitlan's presentation of history as somewhat "objective", the artists' decision to use this three-dimensional form primarily for Tlatelolco's temple and bi-dimensional depictions of Tenochtitlan's temple for most of the codex has lead others to speculate this was intended as a subversive message meant to delegitimize the Tenochcas in the eyes of its Mexica audiences.

Regardless, the attention given to Tlatelolcan narratives in general during the early colonial era--the Florentine Codex among them--was a frustration voiced by fellow Mexica rivals. The Nahua historian Alvarado Tezozomoc, who was of royal Tenochca lineage and compiled his own history, the Cronica Mexicayotl, based on the traditions told to him by other highborn noblemen from Tenochtitlan, addressed this directly while writing to their descendants:

>And as for Tlatelolco: never will [these accounts] be taken from us, for truly they were not only in [the Tlatelolca’s] keeping. But these accounts of the ancient ones, this book of their accounts in Mexico, we have inherited. These accounts are indeed in our keeping. Therefore we too, but especially our sons, our grandsons, our offspring, those who will issue from us, they too will always guard them.

In 1521, under the orders of Pedro de Alvarado the great temple of Tlatelolco was captured and set ablaze by the conquistador Gutierre de Badajoz during the war between the Mexica and allied Spanish/Tlaxcallan forces. For this he was awarded a coat of arms with two golden towers by the Spanish Crown.

Full Codex is available here: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84582686/f6.item

References

Barlow, R. (1944). Gutierre de Badajoz, conquistador del Cu de Tlatelolco. Tlatelolco a través de los tiempos. Memorias de la Academia de la Historia, 2. México

Barlow, R. (1949). El Códice Azcatitlan. Journal de La Société Des Américanistes, 38, 101–135. http://www.jstor.org.kbcc.ezproxy.cuny.edu/stable/24720803

Francisco, D. (2016). Codex Chimalpahin : society and politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Texcoco, Culhuacan, and other Nahua altepetl in central Mexico : the Nahuatl and Spanish annals and accounts collected and recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin. University Of Oklahoma Press.

Navarrete, F. (2004). The Hidden Codes of the Codex Azcatitlan. Res (Cambridge, Mass.), 45(45), 144–160.

Rajagopalan, A. H. (2019). Reading Between the Lines: An Indigenous Account of Conquest on the Missing Folios of Codex Azcatitlan. Iberoamericana (Madrid, Spain), 19(71), 51–76.

In his 2019 essay, "The Making of Academic Myth", Michel Oudijk (UNAM) criticizes some of the findings and approaches of the Mesoamericanists Alfredo Lopez Austin and Michel Graulich--mainly the idea of a fall and lost paradise in Mesoamerican mythology, and the use of mantic/divinatory codices as sources for mythology. Both Lopez Austin and Graulich's colleague Guilhelm Olivier responded soon afterward. However, one point that was never brought up again in their discussions was an issue raised by Oudijk regarding Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec king.

According to Graulich, "Cuauhtémoc, “Falling Eagle,” designates the setting sun." Accordingly, in Graulich's work and others influenced by him (Olivier, Sylvie Peperstraete among others), this idea is important for reading the Mexica histories derived from the lost Cronica X document(s)--authored by the friars Duran and Tovar, and the Nahua chronicler Alvarado Tezozomoc--as a narrative of the Mexica's rise and fall that is modeled on the sun's course throughout the day. That is, the Mexica era of the fifth sun begins at night with their departure from Aztlan, their arriving in Mexico marks sunrise, the sun reaches it's zenith during the reign of Motecuhzoma I corresponding to the halfway-point in the story, followed by the decline of the empire's power in the "afternoon".

But as Oudijk writes, "there is no historical source that suggests Cuauhtemoc can be related to the setting sun. The idea, I suppose, is that the eagle is the sun and therefore a falling eagle is a setting sun, but did that logic really work in Nahua thought?"

This is the question I am taking up for this post. Interestingly, when tracing the symbolism of Cuauhtémoc's name back in time we eventually run into some curious dead ends.

But first, the name itself. Scholars have gradually come to discard the translation of "falling eagle" as innacurate. As J. Richard Andrews explains in his Introduction to Classical Nahuatl:

>"Cuauhtemoc = he is called "It Is One That Has Descended Like an Eagle" ["he is Eagle-like-Descender"; the name has been generally accepted as meaning "Falling Eagle" or "Eagle Which Fell," an obvious mistranslation because the inner stem (cuiiuh)-tli-, "eagle," is not a matrix but an embed that adverbially modifies the matrix stem. The eagle therefore cannot perform the alleged action of "falling" (also, the verbstem does not mean "to fall," but "to descend)."

In a review of Andrews's book, Arthur Anderson, translator of the Florentine Codex into English admits:

>"In most, maybe all, of the points Andrews makes, or the admonitions he gives, he is probably right..."the name Cuauhtemoc" - "eagle" plus "it fell" - "does not mean 'Falling Eagle'..but "One-Who-Has-Descended-like-an-Eagle.; and so on."

But adds in a footnote, "Whether Aztecs reasoned in just that way is another matter. In the picture codices, Cuauhtemoc's name "glyph" is sometimes a descending eagle."

Most recently, Tara Malanga translates it as "He Dove like an Eagle."

Eagles and the sun

The historical sources are full of passages associating eagles with the sun. The Florentine Codex is explicit that the rising sun is like a soaring eagle: "And they greeted [the sun]; they said: The sun hath come to emerge, Tonametl, Xiuhpiltontli, Quauhtleuanitl (rising eagle) [FC BK 2 216; also BK 2 48]; "Perhaps though [the ruler] wilt arrive [after death] by the eagle warriors, the ocelot warriors, the brave warriors who gladden, who cry out to the sun, the valiant warrior, the ascending eagle." [FC BK 6 58]; "the ascending eagle" [FC BK 6, 12, also BK 6 4: "the soaring eagle", "the brave warrior"]; "The sun: the soaring eagle, the turquoise prince, the god." [FC BK 7, 1]. Containers of blood offerings for the sun were called cuauhxicalli--"eagle vessel". Excavated containers regarded as this object are often rimmed with eagle feathers and display an image of the sun. Certain captives for the sun are called "eagle men", a straw called the eagle tube (cuappiaztli) was used to feed blood to the sun, and hearts offered to the sun were "precious eagle cactus fruit" (https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/2/folio/21r; https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/2/folio/18v; https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/2/folio/22v)

In his Cronica Mexicana, Tezozomoc refers to the sun as Cuauhtlehuanitl--ascending eagle--in a funeral oration and the friar Diego Duran recorded that the House of the Eagles was also a Temple of the Sun. It has also been suggested that plate 24 of the Codex Laud represents a setting sun, represented by a disc followed by an eagle, during an eclipse (Ragot 113).

Rulers and the sun

In addition, the idea of the ruler viewed as a sun is also heavily supported by passages in the Florentine Codex which compare the death of the king to the light of the city being extinguished, for which the people plead to Tezcatlipoca to "cause the sun to shine" again by choosing a new ruler [BK 6 Ch 5], and in the parallels between living warriors who serve the king, and the brave dead who go on to serve the sun (BK 6 Ch 3). This sentiment is echoed in Duran, through the character of Nezahualpilli, during Montezuma II's succession following the death of his uncle Ahuitzotl: "O most powerful of all the kings on earth! The clouds have been dispelled and the darkness in which we lived has fled. The sun has appeared and the light of the day shines upon us after the darkness that had been brought by the death of your uncle the king. The torch that illuminates this city has again been lighted and today a mirror has been placed before us, into which we are to look" (Durán 391).

So there is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that the Nahuas thought of their rulers in these terms, at least following the fall of Tenochtitlan. Yet some very influential scholars have gone further. While discussing the face of the Piedra del Sol in his popular book People of the Sun, Alfonso Caso says directly that the sun at dusk was called Cuauhtémoc, with no citation given:

>"In the center of the disk is the face of Tonatiuh; at the sides appear his hands, tipped with eagle claws clutching human hearts, for the sun was looked upon by the Aztecs as an eagle. In the morning, as he rose into the sky, he was called Cuauhtlehuanitl, “the eagle who ascends”; in the evening he was called Cuauhtemoc, “the eagle who fell,” the name of the last, unfortunate, heroic Aztec emperor" (pg 33).

Many years later, in a book chapter on feathers and Mexica insignia, Leonardo Lopez Lujan repeats this claim:

>"This symbolic connection between the largest bird from the ancient territory of Mesoamerica and the most luminous star in the sky is clear in a definition recorded in the Nahuatl text in the Florentine Codex: “"The sun: the soaring eagle, the turquoise prince, the god.” More specifically, in the same document the Sun at dawn is called Cuauhtlehuanitl or eagle that rises, and, in the afternoon, Cuauhtemoc or eagle that descends."

He cites Alfredo López Austin and Josefina García Quintana's edition of Sahagun's Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, which as luck would have it, is the text used by the Digital Florentine Codez https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/about/3_Citations_and_Permissions

However, whereas cuahtlehuanitl (quauhtleoanitl) is attested in the Florentine Codex and Cronica Mexicana, I still find no such reference to the sun at dawn as Cuauhtemoc/Quauhtemoc or a falling/descending eagle.

Returning to Oudijk, who carefully specifies that "There is no evidence that such associations worked for other Tenochca rulers", archaelogical evidence such as the name glyph of Montezuma appearing next to the face of the Stone of the Sun is at least one link between another Tenocha ruler with the sun, as well as monuments which preserve military achievements of rulers in the form of solar discs.

Susan Gillespie makes note of another possible connection by way of Cuauhtlequetzqui, an early leader of the Mexica and god-bearer of Huitzilopochtli.

>"According to a number of texts, especially the writings of Chimalpahin, he was the one who determined the actual location of the city of Tenochtitlan. His name has been translated as “Rising Eagle”, and he may be the individual portrayed in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis at the top left of the page, sitting on a throne labeled with a glyph of an eagle with upraised footprints. His association with the eagle, and the reason for his name (or title), is that the sign Huitzilopochtli gave to mark the place where Tenochtitlan was to be built was an eagle on a cactus growing from a rock, with the eagle representing Huitzilopochtli himself as part of his solar aspect. Cuauhtlequetzqui’s counterpart at the fall of the city of Tenochtitlan was, of course, Cuauhtemoc, “Descending Eagle,” who surrendered to Cortés." (Gillespie 199).

Chimpalpahin also preserves a story of the fifth tlatoani Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina Chalchiuhtlatonac (jade + sun), who is born at sunrise while his half-brother Tlacaelel, like Venus, is born just before dawn (Gillespie 133). Besides this, Duran also records "Tlalchiuhtonatiuh" (Setting Sun), as another name of Tizoc, which given the perspective of this tlatoani in the Cronica X tradition, perhaps carried a related symbolism (Duran 296).

Finally, the Polish scholar Julia Madajczak had a fascinating paper published recently arguing that the story of Cuauhtemoc's death in the Annals of Tlatelolco was conceived as "a compelling narrative of a dying ruler-Sun" that bears traces of pre-Hispanic and colonial tradition like that of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl. In it she also points out that a scene showing Azcapotzalco's tlatoani Tezozomic's death and funeral in the Codex Xolotl uses calendrical symbolism to compare him to a setting sun (page 8 of this codex).

Based on these examples and despite the apparent overeach by some scholars, the idea this logic derived from Nahua rather than modern academic symbolism seems convincing. Curious if anyone has any thoughts.

I'm adding a list of attested names for the sun in Nahuatl in the colonial sources. Most come from the Florentine Codex but other authors and documents are listed and some are common among several sources. Apologies for the mixed orthography. If anyone knows of any others, please feel free to add them:

Tonatiuh ("it goes along producing heat", "to produce heat, to be warm, to shine." "one that goes along producing heat"- Andrews, Introduction to Classical Nahuatl)

Tonametl (Resplendent One) https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/2/folio/134v

Xiuhpiltontli (the Turquoise child) https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/2/folio/134v

Xipilli / Xippilli / Xiuhpilli (Turquoise-noble - Andrews, the Turqoise Prince; BK6 ch3, BK 7 ch1; the Precious Child, the rising sun - in Sullivan, "Prayer to Tlatloc"; Pedro Ponce, in Ruiz de Alarcón)

Cuauhtlehuanitl or Cuauhtl-Ehuanitl (~ascending eagle, eagle with fiery arrows, the sun at dawn:https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/2/folio/134v, https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/7/folio/1r, Pedro Ponce). Also:

Cuauhtleehuanic tocpac quiztiuh ("it passes like a flying eagle over our heads" Tezozomoc; Duran does not reproduce the Nahuatl but his translation matches this epithet: "to him who encircles the earth with his might each day, to the one who passes over our heads" in Duran, 186)

Tiacauh (the Valiant Warrior) https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/6/folio/10r

In tonan, in tota, in tonatiuh in tlatecuhtli (The sun, the lord of the earth https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/6/folio/9v; https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/6/folio/60r)

Totonametl in manic ("the Everlastingly Resplendent One" - Sullivan "prayer to tlaloc"; "El que perdura resplandeciendo" - Garibay's trans of Sahagun (https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/6/folio/147r))

Oquichtli (The Brave One https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/6/folio/31r)

Cuauhtli (The Eagle https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/6/folio/172v)

In tocelutl, in uel tinexeoac ("the ocelot which is ashen" https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/6/folio/172v)

Tlalchitonatiuh (Sun of the Red Earth, the setting sun. Vaticanus A/Codex Rios plate 25--spelled "tlalchitonatio", Duran )

As the Sun of an Era (from La Leyenda de los Soles)

5. Ollintonatiuh (movement sun), Nahui Ollin/Nauholin [four movement]
6. Atonatiuh (water sun) Nahui Atl [four water]
7. Quiauhtonatiuh (rain sun), Nahui Quiahuitl [four rain]
8. Ehecatonatiuh (wind sun), Nahui Ehecatl [four wind]
9. Oceltonatiuh (jaguar sun), Nahui Ocelotl [four jaguar]

References [EDIT: corrected the citation for Anderson]

Anderson, A. J. O. (1976). Methodologies for Nahuatl translation. New Scholar, 5(2), 269–282..

Andrews, J. R. (2003). Introduction to classical Nahuatl. University of Oklahoma Press.

Caso, A., Covarrubias, M., & Dunham, L. (1988). The Aztecs: People of the sun. University of Oklahoma Press.

Durán, D., & Heyden, D. (2010). The history of the Indies of New Spain. University of Oklahoma Press.

Gillespie, S. D. (2016). The Aztec kings: The construction of rulership in Mexica history. University of Arizona Press.

López Austin, A. (2020). Caras viejas, afeites nuevos: La usanza. Respuesta a Michel Oudijk. Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 60, 47–76. https://nahuatl.historicas.unam.mx/index.php/ecn/article/view/78013

López Luján, L. (2015). Under the sign of the sun: Eagle feathers, skins, and insignia in the Mexica world. In A. Russo, G. Wolf, & D. Fane (Eds.), Images take flight: Feather art in Mexico and Europe, 1400–1700 (pp. 132–143). Hirmer Verlag GmbH; Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut.

Madajczak, J. (2025). The last journey of Cuauhtemoc: Models for the Anales de Tlatelolco's version of Cuauhtemoc's death. In V. Huber & J. F. Schwaller (Eds.), Beyond Cortés and Montezuma: The conquest of Mexico revisited (pp. 99–124). University Press of Colorado.

Malanga, T. (2025). A funeral for Moctezuma, 1520. In C. Townsend & J. Anthony (Eds.), After the broken spears: The Aztecs in the wake of conquest (pp. 18–29). Oxford University Press.

Olivier, G. (2020). “Jesucristo murió porque se le pasaron las copas”: Apuntes sobre la influencia cristiana en los mitos mesoamericanos y sobre el método comparativo para su estudio. Respuesta a Michel Oudijk. Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 60, 77–119. https://nahuatl.historicas.unam.mx/index.php/ecn/article/view/78015

Oudijk, M. R. (2019). The making of academic myth. In K. Mikulska & J. A. Offner (Eds.), Indigenous graphic communication systems: A theoretical approach (pp. 340–375). University Press of Colorado.

Peperstraete, S. (2007). La « Chronique X »: Reconstitution et analyse d'une source perdue fondamentale sur la civilisation aztèque, d'après l'Historia de las Indias de Nueva España de D. Durán (1581) et la Crónica Mexicana de F. A. Tezozomoc (ca. 1598) (BAR International Series 1630). Archaeopress

Ragot, N. (2000). Les au-delàs aztèques (Paris Monographs in American Archaeology, Vol. 7; BAR International Series 881). BAR Publishing

Ruiz de Alarcón, H. (1984). Treatise on the heathen superstitions and customs that today live among the Indians native to this New Spain, 1629 (J. R. Andrews & R. Hassig, Trans.). University of Oklahoma Press.

Sullivan, T. D. (1965). A prayer to Tlaloc. Estudios De Cultura Náhuatl, 5, 39–55. Recuperado a partir de https://nahuatl.historicas.unam.mx/index.php/ecn/article/view/78584

Tezozómoc, F. A. (2001). Crónica mexicana.