Although their civilization endured merely two centuries, the unparalleled sophistication and complexity of the Aztec empire is revealed through the artifacts unearthed from this remarkable Fourteenth Century Mesoamerican culture. The relics from the period, both the sacred and the mundane, reflect the spiritual, social and economic aspects of a multifaceted culture.
“The Aztec World: A Unique View of a Mighty Empire,” comprising approximately 300 objects, is on view at the Field Museum through April 19. The exhibition delicately balances views of both art history and the anthropological study of Aztec society.
The objects themselves are drawn from the collections of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Histori a and the Templo Mayor Museum in Mexico City, as well as the Field Museum. Additional items have been drawn from the collections of numerous other institutions in both Mexico and the United States.
The Aztecs were largely nomadic until they migrated from the north and ultimately settled on several islets in Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico. In 1325, they founded the city of Tenochtitlan, now central Mexico City. While the site had been occupied as early as 10,000 BC, the Aztecs are credited with having embarked on major development. They drained marshes and laid out chinampas where they planted crops, sometimes harvesting as many as five times per year because of the richness of the soil.
They created canals and aqueducts, expanded the islands and built causeways. They constructed sewer systems to recycle human waste as fertilizer. They had richly furnished palaces, paved streets, rich fabrics and gold and silver jewelry with precious stones. They established highly refined legal, astrological, engineering, health and cultural systems. Art, music and dance were important; while they did not write, they used pictographs and hieroglyphs.
At its height, Tenochtitlan was home to 200,000 inhabitants, rivaling the European capitals of Paris, Rome and Madrid in numbers and sophistication. The city occupied the better part of a bowl-shaped valley that was 40 miles in diameter. Through conquest, the empire expanded throughout the Mesoamerican basin, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The Aztecs created a highly advanced economy, centered on markets where merchants and citizens traded tools, weapons and jewelry made from obsidian, greenstone and cloth, as well as services and commodities like salt and lime. At its zenith, the main market at Tenochtitlan is believed to have attracted as many as 60,000 daily visitors. Commerce and social interaction were equally vibrant.
The ceremonial center of Tenochtitlan was the Templo Mayor, which was discovered when an eight-ton statue of the Aztec goddess Coatlicue was unearthed during the 1978 excavations of the Mexico City cathedral. The Templo Mayor was a large double pyramid; it was the principal Aztec temple, the embodiment of the Aztec belief system, which centered on the sun.
Templo Mayor was built to symbolize the mountain Coatepec where earth goddess Coatlicue gave birth to Huitzilopochtli, the principal god whose province was sun, war and fire and who defeated his half-sister, Coyolxauhqui, who had plotted to kill their mother for becoming pregnant with him. Her body fell from the mountain, breaking apart and becoming the footing of the temple, while her head flew into the sky and became the moon. Two large staircases led to two sanctuaries, one dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, where captive warriors were sacrificed so their blood would nourish him in the struggle between light and dark. The other shrine was meant to honor Tlaloc, the god of rain and fertility.
It is Templo Mayor from which most of the objects on view in “The Aztec World” are drawn. The exhibit is organized to provide a view of all strata of Aztec society, from the farms and houses of farmers and fishermen, artisans, merchants and warriors to the central temple district surrounded by the sumptuous palaces of the nobility and priests. It also sheds light on the roles of women.
The Aztecs had a fairly even distribution of labor. Women were merchants, referees of trade disputes, healers, midwives, courtesans and prostitutes, in addition to their roles of cook and weaver. Women were also considered warriors as childbirth was akin to combat. Women who died in childbirth were thought to accompany the sun in its descent, just as dead warriors accompanied it in its morning rise.
Men were farmers, merchants, builders, priests, warriors and rulers. Both made daily offerings of food, incense and prayer to the gods. That spirituality permeated the utensils and vessels, weapons and ceremonial objects and it is evident in each of the objects on view.
While life was centered on home and hearth, the deities had a profound influence on daily life. The Aztecs worshipped some 200 gods, most of whom were sources of energy, and who were associated with specific ethnic and social groups. Since it was an agrarian society, the calendar was central and the sun god Huitzilopochtli was the most important in the hierarchy of gods.
Warfare was another essential element of Aztec society and it was waged on earth and in the heavens. On earth, its purpose was the capture of communities and incorporating them into the Aztec society, thereby expanding the empire. Its spiritual significance lay in the capture of victims to be sacrificed in bloody ceremonial offerings to the gods to secure rain, harvests and victory in war. While the nature of sacrifice might be abhorrent to contemporary sensibilities, it was common throughout Mesoamerican cultures, viewed as a way of maintaining cosmic balance.
The objects on view in “The Aztec World” came largely from Templo Mayor, while many others came from other excavations within the geography of the Aztec empire. In fact, for many years it was a simple matter to uncover Aztec artifacts merely by digging in the area.
The exhibit reveals the depth and range of the artifacts of Aztec life. The artisan class included the potters, goldsmiths, carpenters, weavers and lapidaries, who created such objects as a detailed Tlaloc pot that retains brilliant sky blue decoration with bold bands of brown paint. The face has large round eyes and fangs, which some liken to jaguar teeth. As the god of rain, fertility and lightning, Tlaloc was believed to carry lightning in his jar, exhibiting the duality that the deities were thought to possess. No one god was either purely good or purely evil; most incorporated opposite qualities, evidence of their organization of their world into binary opposites.
In their sculpture, the Aztecs demonstrated an extensive and scientific knowledge of the human body. Details such as wrinkled foreheads, gap teeth and hunched backs are evident in many pieces.
A life-size ceramic eagle sculpture with stylized feathers and claws stood at the entrance to the House of Eagles, next to the Templo Mayor. The eagle signified the sun; the eagle warrior, the soldier of the sun, was the most feared of Aztec warriors. Equally fearsome was the jaguar warrior, who represented the god of the night sky. Eagle and jaguar warriors were constantly engaged in warfare in order to satisfy the ongoing need for prisoners to be used in the ritual sacrifice to the gods. Many of the objects on view incorporate feathers in their design, indicating reverence for the eagle and a reference to the hummingbird feathers that covered the sun god.
A major source of information about the Aztec world is the Florentine Codex, a highly detailed account, including about 1,800 intricate drawings, depicting daily life, history and social structure, the gods and the calendar. Several images from its pages are on view. The codex was written in Nahuatl and Spanish and assembled, based on original materials, now lost, and on interviews with Nahuatl-speaking elders of the former empire by Fray Bernardino de Sahagun beginning in the 1540s. The information he acquired was organized into 12 volumes, three of which were devoted to merchants, nobles and the citizens. Another was dedicated to rhetoric and moral philosophy, and it included detail on life with the residential compound, about birth, marriage and death, and about women’s lives. The codex is the major source of information about the Aztecs before the Spanish conquest.
One image from the warrior section of the codex depicts an elaborately garbed eagle warrior and an equally resplendent jaguar warrior, both with Aztec swords; another from the codex shows a simply dressed farmer at harvest.
After the Spanish under Hernan Cortes destroyed Tenochtitlan in an eight-month siege, the imprint of Spain and Catholicism became evident. The merging of the cultures had begun. A stone serpent on view that is a quintessential Aztec image was carved into a baptismal font. Other Spanish influences are manifested in a Spanish sword and helmet, and Spanish coins cast from local silver, which are all on view.
A companion book to the exhibit, The Aztec World, is published by Harry N. Abrams. The museum, which was founded to house the biological and anthropological collections assembled for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, is at 1400 South Lake Shore Drive. For information, www.fieldmuseum.org or 312-922-9410.
