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Mesoamerican Rituals and the Solar Cycle

New Perspectives on the Veintena Festivals

by Élodie Dupey García (Volume editor) Elena Mazzetto (Volume editor)
©2021 Textbook XX, 334 Pages

Summary

This book explores a seminal topic concerning the Mesoamerican past: the religious festivals that took place during the eighteen periods of twenty days, or veintenas, into which the solar year was divided. Pre-Columbian societies celebrated these festivals through complex rituals, involving the priests and gods themselves, embodied in diverse beings and artifacts. Specific sectors of society also participated in the festivals, while city inhabitants usually attended public ceremonies. As a consequence, this ritual cycle played a significant role in Mesoamerican religious life; at the same time, it informs us about social relations in pre-Columbian societies. Both religious and social aspects of the solar cycle festivals are tackled in the twelve contributions in this book, which aims to address the entire veintena sequence and as much of the territory and history of Mesoamerica as possible. Specifically, the book revisits long-standing discussions of the solar cycle festivals, but also explores these religious practices in original ways, in particular through investigating understudied rituals and offering new interpretations of rites that have previously been extensively analyzed. Other chapters consider the entire veintena sequence through the prism of specific topics, providing multiple though often complementary analyses. As a consequence, this book will attract the attention of scholars and graduate students with interests in Mesoamerica and early Latin America, as well as ethnohistory, cultural history, history of religions, art history, archaeology and anthropology.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Dedication
  • Contents
  • List of Illustrations
  • List of Tables
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Part I: Rites and Myths in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica
  • Chapter One: Tezcatlipoca and the Maya Gods of Abundance: The Feast of Toxcatl and the Question of Homologies in Mesoamerican Religion
  • Chapter Two: The Re-enactment of the Birth of the Gods in Mexica Veintena Celebrations: Some Observations
  • Chapter Three: Quetzalcoatl in Nahua Myths and Rituals: Discreet or Omnipresent Protagonist?
  • Chapter Four: Beyond Nature and Mythology: Relational Complexity in Contemporary and Ancient Mesoamerican Rituals
  • Part II: Ritual Actors and Activities in the Veintena Festivals
  • Chapter Five: Haab’ Festivals among the Postclassic Maya: Evidence from Ethnohistoric Sources and the Madrid Codex
  • Chapter Six: Maize and Flaying in Aztec Rituals
  • Chapter Seven: The Toxcatl and Panquetzaliztli Figurines
  • Chapter Eight: Myths, Rites, and the Agricultural Cycle: The Huixtotin Priests and the Veintenas
  • Part III: Pre-Columbian Categories, Colonial Interpretations
  • Chapter Nine: Dance and Sacrificial Rituals in the Veintena Ceremonies
  • Chapter Ten: Ritual and Religious Practices Described in the Florentine Codex: Ritual Unit as a Structural Concept
  • Chapter Eleven: An Augustinian Political Theology in New Spain: Towards a Franciscan Interpretation of the Veintenas
  • Chapter Twelve: Bright Plumages, Teary Children, and Blessed Rains: Possible Reminiscences of Atlcahualo during the Indigenous Ceremonial Pomp of Saint Francis in Post-Conquest Mexico City
  • Epilogue
  • Notes on Contributors
  • Index

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Figure 1.1. An apparent translation of K’awiil (right) into a Teotihuacan-style god (left) in Late Classic Copan. Detail of Temple 26 Inscription, Copan. Source: Drawing by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos.
Figure 1.2. The Maya Maize God. (a) Detail of Late Classic Vase K1183. Source: Drawing by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos. (b) Early Classic graffito from Tikal Structure 5D-Sub3A, showing an ithyphallic portrait of the dancing Maize God. Source: Drawing by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, after Trik and Kampen 1983, fig. 83g.
Figure 1.3. K’awiil and the Maize God with cranial torches. (a) K’awiil. Detail of vase K2970. (b) The Maize God. Detail of vase K5126. Source: Drawings by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos.
Figure 1.4. Detail of Quirigua Stela H, north side. At the top, K’awiil is armed with shield and spear. A thick flow of liquid descends upon the Maize God, who peeks out at the base of the carving. Source: Photograph by Dmitri Beliaev, Atlas Epigráfico de Petén Project, CEMYK.
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Figure 1.5. Painted capstones from Dzibilnocac, Campeche, showing K’awiil as a bringer of abundant food and wealth. (a) Capstone 1. Plentiful grains fall from an inverted sack in K’awiil’s hand. (b) Capstone 3. K’awiil holds a basket full of grains. The caption includes references to cacao and “abundance of food.” Source: Drawings by Christian Prager, Maya Image Archive (mayadictionary.de). License: CC by 4.0.
Figure 1.6. The Maize God attended by a group of naked young women. The hieroglyphic inscription refers to the god’s death. Detail of vase K7268. Source: Drawing by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos.
Figure 1.7. Detail of the Vase of the Paddlers (K3033), showing the Maize God in dancing pose, attended by two naked women in an aquatic setting. A turtle carapace appears behind the hips of the squatting women to the viewer’s left. Source: Drawing by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos.
Figure 1.8. The Nahua goddess Xochiquetzal, wearing a turtle shell on the back. Detail of Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, pl. 35. Source: Drawing by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos.
Figure 1.9. The Maize God in his transit to death, riding a canoe manned by the Paddler Gods. Detail of the Vase of the Paddlers (K3033). Source: Drawing by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos.
Figure 1.10. The Maize God riding a canoe in his transit to death. Detail of vase K5608. Source: Drawing by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos.
Figure 2.1. The birth of five Tezcatlipoca of different colors and of Quetzalcoatl, who emerge from an earth goddess with sacrificial attributes. Detail of Codex Borgia, pl. 32. Source: Drawing courtesy of Elbis Domínguez.
Figure 2.2. The Mixtec god 9 Wind is born from a flint knife in the year 10 House. Detail of Codex Vindobonensis, pl. 49. Source: Drawing courtesy of Elbis Domínguez.
Figure 2.3 (a & b). Mimixcoa and Huastecs with enormous false phalluses approach the goddess Toci to fertilize her. Detail of Codex Borbonicus, pl. 30. Source: Drawings by Rodolfo Ávila.
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Figure 2.4. Toci-Tlazolteotl gives birth to Cinteotl, the Maize God. Detail of Codex Borbonicus, pl. 13. Source: Photograph courtesy of Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée nationale, Paris.
Figure 2.5. Represented by a hand over the glyph for the earth, the Maya glyph U-TAL-KAB, “it is his earth-touching,” is associated with the birth of the gods in the inscriptions of the Cross Group at Palenque. Source: Drawing courtesy of Elbis Domínguez, after Stuart 2005, 78.
Figure 2.6. King Motecuhzoma II wore the insignia of Mixcoatl when he headed the collective hunt during the veintena of Quecholli. Detail of Codex Tudela, fol. 24r. Source: Drawing courtesy of Elbis Domínguez.
Figure 3.1. The celebration of the patrons of the veintena Etzalcualiztli: Quetzalcoatl, Tlaloc, and Xolotl. Detail of Codex Borbonicus, pl. 26. Source: Photograph courtesy of Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée nationale, Paris.
Figure 3.2 (a & b). Sculptures of feathered serpents or quetzalcoatl at the foot of the stairs that ascended to Huitzilopochtli’s shrine in the Templo Mayor of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Source: Photographs by Élodie Dupey García, published with the authorization of Proyecto Templo Mayor, Mexico City.
Figure 3.3. Four gods participate in a ballgame in the depiction of the veintena Tecuilhuitontli. Quetzalcoatl is one of them and appears in the lower left corner of the court. Detail of Codex Borbonicus, pl. 27. Source: Photograph courtesy of Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée nationale, Paris.
Figure 5.1. Glyphs representing the 18 months of the haab’, plus the five-day period of Wayeb’. Source: Morley 1975, Fig. 20.
Figure 5.2. (a) Sip ceremony on Madrid 50b; (b) Sip deity as base of tree on Madrid 45c; (c) Sip deity in costume of peccary on Madrid 39c. Source: Codex Tro-Cortesianus 1967, pl. 39, 45, 50 (details). With permission of Museo de América, Madrid.
Figure 5.3. Renewal ceremony on Madrid 16a. Source: Codex Tro-Cortesianus 1967, pl. 16 (detail). With permission of Museo de América, Madrid.
Figure 5.4. Renewal ceremony on Madrid 19b. Source: Codex Tro-Cortesianus 1967, pl. 19 (detail). With permission of Museo de América, Madrid.
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Figure 5.5. Possible yearbearer ceremony on Madrid 51b. Source: Codex Tro-Cortesianus 1967, pl. 51 (detail). With permission of Museo de América, Madrid.
Figure 6.1. Corn storage. Detail of Ms. Med. Palat. 219, bk 7: fol. 16r. Source: Photograph courtesy of Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence.
Figure 6.2. Offering of ocholli maize ears in Tlacaxipehualiztli. Detail of Ms. Med. Palat. 219, bk 9: fol. 49v. Source: Photograph courtesy of Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence.
Figure 6.3. Maize ear wrapped in its bracts as an attribute of agriculture and rain deities. Detail of Codex Magliabechiano, fol. 29r. Source: Drawing by Elena Mazzetto.
Figure 6.4. Maize ears wrapped in their bracts as a religious offering. Detail of Codex Borbonicus, pl. 23. Source: Photograph courtesy of Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée nationale, Paris.
Figure 6.5. Maize ears wrapped in their bracts as a religious offering. Detail of Ms. Med. Palat. 218, bk 2: fol. 29r. Source: Photograph courtesy of Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence.
Figure 8.1. Panquetzaliztli. Detail of Primeros Memoriales, fol. 252v. Source: Drawing courtesy of Nicolas Latsanopoulos.
Figure 8.2. The ilhuicatl huixtotlan. Detail of Codex Vaticanus A or Ríos, fol. 1v. Source: Drawing courtesy of Nicolas Latsanopoulos.
Figure 8.3. Huixtocihuatl as the emblem of the Tecuilhuitontli veintena. Detail of Codex Vaticanus A or Ríos, fol. 45v. Source: Drawing courtesy of Nicolas Latsanopoulos.
Figure 8.4. (a) Figure wearing the eagle claw on the Teocalli of Sacred Warfare. Source: Drawing courtesy of Nicolas Latsanopoulos; (b) Yohualtecuhtli. Detail of Codex Borgia, pl. 35. Source: Drawings courtesy of Nicolas Latsanopoulos.
Figure 8.5. Huixtotin priests in the veintena of Ochpaniztli. Detail of Codex Borbonicus, pl. 29. Source: Photograph courtesy of Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée nationale, Paris.
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Figure 8.6. Rites of the veintena of Ochpaniztli. Codex Borbonicus, pl. 30. Source: Photograph courtesy of Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée nationale, Paris.
Figure 9.1. Tlahuahuanaliztli during the festival of Tlacaxipehualiztli. Detail of Codex Tovar or Codex Ramírez, fol. 27. Source: Drawing courtesy of Elbis Domínguez.
Figure 9.2. Dance with severed heads. Detail of Codex Borgia, pl. 32. Source: Drawing courtesy of Elbis Domínguez.
Figure 9.3. Tlacaxipehualiztli. Detail of Florentine Codex (Ms. Med. Palat. 219), bk 2: fol. 20v. Source: Drawing courtesy of Elbis Domínguez.
Figure 10.1. Festivals in the Florentine Codex. Detail of Ms. Med. Palat. 218, bk. 2: fol. 3r. Source: Photograph courtesy of Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence.
Figure 10.2. Festival structure. Source: Diagram by Andrea B. Rodríguez Figueroa and Leopoldo Valiñas Coalla.
Figure 10.3. The Ritual Unit and its relations with the festival. Source: Diagram by Andrea B. Rodríguez Figueroa and Leopoldo Valiñas Coalla.
Figure 12.1. Map of Late Postclassic Mexico-Tenochtitlan neighboring plots, with the quadripartite urban arrangement and seven main calpolli with some of their calpolteteo. Source: Design by Rossend Rovira-Morgado.
Figure 12.2. Idealized axonometric view of Tenochtitlan and map of the Basin of Mexico with the places and some locations discussed. Source: Design by Rossend Rovira-Morgado.
Figure 12.3. Tlaloc’s aztatzontli headdresses depicted in relation to the veintena of Atlcahualo/Cuahuitl ehua/Xilomaniliztli. Detail of Codex Tudela c. 1540, fol. 11r. Source: Drawing by Rossend Rovira-Morgado.
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We would like to express our gratitude to the institutions and individuals who have supported this book project and have assisted us during the process. Foremost we thank the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where we are conducting our research on ancient Nahua culture and religion, principally the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas that hosted the international conference “Las fiestas de las veintenas. Nuevas aportaciones en homenaje a Michel Graulich” in 2016, which was the first step in the long journey of making this volume. A very special acknowledgment goes to Gabrielle Vail, who invited us to submit this book to be the inaugural volume of Peter Lang’s series “Indigenous Cultures of Latin America: Past and Present”: thank you for the help in establishing the fruitful contact with the publisher, the guidance during the development of the book proposal, and the detailed review of specific parts of this work. We also owe a debt of gratitude to the colleagues and students who have provided their support at different stages, foremost the contributors of the present volume who have encouraged us and have placed their trust in us, as well as Cecelia F. Klein, Leonardo López Luján, and John Pohl, who have penned the endorsements. Likewise, we are grateful to Cynthia Vail, Debra Nagao, Chet Van Duzer, Michael Parker, Wendy Aguilar, Stan Declercq, Omar Tapia, Ilse Flores, and Jesús López del Río, who have taken care of the translation and correction of the written contents; to Elbis Domínguez, Nicolas Latsanopoulos, and Rodolfo Ávila, for creating the drawings that illustrate several chapters; and to Mara Vargas and Alicia Cervantes, for helping us to access ←xix | xx→some essential information. We also thank the anonymous reviewer selected by Peter Lang, whose careful reading of our manuscript and detailed remarks have contributed significantly to the final form of this work. Very important, too, was the support received from the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, the Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée nationale in Paris, the Museo de América in Madrid, and the Proyecto Templo Mayor in Mexico City, which have allowed us to reproduce images of Mesoamerican codices and artifacts that are fundamental to the academic quality of this book. Finally, we sincerely acknowledge Emma Clarke, Erika Hendrix, and the editorial team at Peter Lang for their interest in our project, as well as their professionalism and all their hard work in preparing this publication.

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Introduction

elena mazzetto and élodie dupey garcía

This book explores a seminal topic concerning the Mesoamerican past: the festivals that took place during the eighteen periods of twenty days, or veintenas, into which the solar year was divided. In the final stage of Pre-Columbian history—commonly known as the Late Postclassic (AD 1200–1521)—some Mesoamerican societies celebrated these festivals through complex rituals, which included sacrifices, offerings, singing and dancing, ceremonial itineraries and feigned battles. In each festival, the rites involved the priests and the gods themselves, embodied in diverse beings, artifacts, and natural elements. Specific sectors of society—the king, nobles, warriors, merchants, midwives, slaves, and so forth—also participated in these festivals, while the populations of major cities or more modest settlements usually attended public ceremonies. As a consequence, this ritual cycle appears to be a significant thread in Mesoamerican religious life; at the same time, it informs us about social relations in Pre-Columbian societies. Both religious and social aspects of the solar cycle festivals are addressed in the twelve contributions in this book, which aims to improve our understanding of this ceremonial sequence: its actors and rites, its structure and categories, its correspondence to myths, as well as its continuities and meaning in colonial and contemporary times.

time computation systems in mesoamerica

Since the earliest stages of civilization, Mesoamerican cultures have created complex calendar systems that measured and organized time. These time computation ←1 | 2→systems were of fundamental significance in the Pre-Columbian era. Not only sophisticated tools for recording the passage of time, they were schemata that structured ancient thought and understanding of the world. In fact, these calendar systems influenced the conduct of all members of society and determined their future. They were also frameworks for explaining events that affected the natural environment, in particular the alternation of day and night, as well as seasonal cycles.

Mesoamerican civilizations primarily used two systems of time computation. One of them was a divinatory 260-day count, called the tonalpohualli in Nahuatl, a term that literally means “day-count” or “count of the fates.”1 This divinatory calendar was formed by the association of twenty calendrical signs2 and thirteen successive numerals—1-Crocodile/Earth Monster, 2-Wind, 3-House, etc.—whose combination led to the division of the cycle in periods of 13 days. Each day and each 13-day series were placed under the ascendency of a divinity, who imbued them with positive or negative influences that had an impact on all human activities, whether in everyday life or in ritual contexts. Information about the fortune of these temporal periods was recorded in “books of fate,” manuscripts where the count was depicted in various forms. Such manuscripts were used by calendar specialists in order to predict omens, which were taken into account, for example, when sowing and harvesting, as well as to choose the name of a newborn, to determine the start of war or a trade expedition, or to find the date for a wedding or a ruler’s accession to the throne.3

The second system of time computation, the subject of this book, was a solar calendar of 365 days, called the xiuhpohualli, “year-count,” in Nahuatl, and haab’, cuiya, and iza, “year,” respectively in Maya (Yucatec), Mixtec, and Zapotec. It was generally formed by eighteen periods of twenty days, plus a period of five days that was seen as unlucky: this was a time when ordinary activities, such as lighting a fire to cook, were forbidden, and the destiny of individuals born during these days was prophesied as being extremely inauspicious, which was reflected in the name they were given.4 At the time of contact, the Spaniards began calling the 20-day interval veintena, the Spanish translation of the Nahuatl word cempohualli, “twenty.” In the account known as “Anales de Cuauhtitlan” (2011, 27) and in the Primeros Memoriales (1997, 55) the calendar divided into periods of twenty days is named cecempohuallapohualiztli or cecempoallapualli “count twenty by twenty” in Nahuatl, an expression used by scholars such as Patrick Johansson (2005), Andrea Rodríguez Figueroa and Leopoldo Valiñas Coalla (2010, 2014), Marc Thouvenot (2015, 2019), and Ana Díaz (2011). In colonial times, the solar count was also known as the “calendar of the fixed festivals” (calendario de las fiestas fijas) (Sahagún 1979, bk 2: fol. 3r), because, in the eyes of the Spaniards, the religious events celebrated throughout this cycle of time always occurred on the same dates during the year, while the ceremonies corresponding to the divinatory calendar were movable, for they followed the 260-day count.5

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In the Late Postclassic, these two systems of time measurement were considered extremely ancient, and their invention was often attributed to the gods or the forefathers of humankind; in some contexts, the two counts were even conceived of as divinities. In Central Mexico, for example, according to the “Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas” (2002, 27–29), the days, the “months,”6 and the solar calendar were created by the gods Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli, before they made the primordial waters and the earth’s surface. Similarly, the “Anales de Cuauhtitlan” (2011, 27), together with the Florentine Codex compiled by the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún (1950–82, bk 4: 4), recount that the creation of the divinatory count of 260 days and the organization of the solar cycle in 20-day periods were established by the ancestral couple Cipactonal and Oxomoco. The Maya, in turn, thought that the great temporal cycles belonged to ancient times even predating the creation of the world (Velásquez García 2017, 8), and they conceived of them as divinities, in other words as beings endowed with consciousness, reason, knowledge, and will.

Details

Pages
XX, 334
Year
2021
ISBN (PDF)
9781433175411
ISBN (ePUB)
9781433175428
ISBN (Hardcover)
9781433175442
ISBN (Hardcover)
9781433175404
DOI
10.3726/b16286
Language
English
Publication date
2021 (March)
Published
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien, 2021. XX, 334 pp., 24 b/w ill., 20 color ill., 8 tables.

Biographical notes

Élodie Dupey García (Volume editor) Elena Mazzetto (Volume editor)

Élodie Dupey García is a tenured Professor and Researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She holds a PhD in History of Religions from the École Pratique des Hautes Études (France). She has received a fellowship in Pre-Columbian Studies from Dumbarton Oaks and a Scholar Grant from the Getty Research Institute. She is the editor of Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl and the volume Painting the Skin. Pigments on Bodies and Codices in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (2018). Elena Mazzetto is Adjunct Lecturer at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), where she previously held a postdoctoral position. She also received a two-year postdoctoral grant from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and holds a PhD in History from the Universidad Ca’Foscari de Venecia (Italy) and the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (France). She is the author of Lieux de culte et parcours cérémoniels dans les fêtes des vingtaines à Mexico-Tenochtitlan (2014).

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Title: Mesoamerican Rituals and the Solar Cycle