Mexican Beauty
Worcester, MA

The Aztec Calendar

Stone Of The Sun

      The one sculpture which identifies the Mexicas above all others is the Stone of the Sun, discovered in December 1790, in the Plaza Mayor in the capital of New Spain. Because of its symbolic content, with the names of the days and the cosmogonic suns, it was incorrectly identified as the Aztec Calendar. This is a large gladiatorial sacrificial altar, known as a temalacatl, which was not finished because of a big crack that runs from one side to the center of the piece at the rear. Despite the fracture, it must have been used to stage the fights between warriors in the tlacaxipehualiztli ceremony. In the design of the disk, the face of Xiuhtecuhtli -emergining from the earth hole, holding a pair of human hearts and showing his tongue transformed in a sacrificial knife- can be recognized; he is surrounded by the four suns that preceded the Fifth Sun, in turn inscribed in the sequence of the 20 day signs, framed with the figure of the Sun with its four beams symmetrically accompanied by sacrificial sharp points. The star is surrounded by two Xiuhcoatl or "Fire Serpents", which carry it across the heavens.