Coyolxauhqui
One of the Aztec Moon Gods/desses, Coyolxāuhqui (Nahuatl pronunciation: [kojoɬˈʃaːʍki], Koy-ol-shauw-kee) meaning something close to "Women painted/adorned with copper bells" (Milbrath 1997: 185, Townsend 2009: 57).
This major sculpture that depicts the aftermath of her siblings birth in mythology right next to the Temple of Huitzilopochtli in Tenochtitlan. The stone itself is carved in high relief on a single stone 3.25 meters in diameter (Townsend, 2009). Due to her naked depiction at least half of my 9 person archaeology study abroad class, including me, started calling her Tits Magee.
* Definitely not the nicest thing, though, to be fair, we were pretty dumb.
The mythology on the other hand is amazing. There are many various versions of the story, so I'll share the first one that I heard back in 2014. Just know that while researching, almost everything I read differed in one way or another.
So, long, mixed-up story short:
Coyolxauhqui's mother, Coatlicue, the goddess of life and death was sweeping the temple [of ...] when a ball of feathers fluttered from the heavens and landed on Coatlicue's breast. This (for some reason) caused her to become pregnant and her belly swelled. She later returned home to her daughter and 400 sons, the Centzon Huitznahuas (the Four Hundred Southern Stars), and Coyolxauhqui saw her mother's condition and became enraged as her mother had dishonored her entire family. Coyolxauhqui pulled her brothers aside and plotted to murder their mother. Unfortunately, she must not have pulled them far enough to the side and Coatlicue overheard everything, but she didn't panic long because she had a baby Huitzilopochtli growing in her uterus who told her that she shouldn't worry, he would protect her.
That night the 400 brothers dressed in their warrior garb with Coyolxauhqui leading the charge to kill their mother in her sleep. Because the group was found out, both Coatlicue and Huitzilopochtli were prepared for the attack. In an instant Huitzilopochtli burst out of his mother's body fully armed and started cutting down all of his brothers, without fully killing them, before turning his axe towards his sister. With no chance of victory Coyolxauhqui and her brothers were led to the top of the nearby Sacred Snake mountain. One by one Huitzilopochtli chopped off each one of the Centzon Huitznahuas' heads and threw them up into the sky where they 'lived' up to their name as the 400 southern stars. Lastly, Huitzilopochtli ripped his sister Coyolxauhqui apart at the limbs before decapitated her and tossing her head into the sky to become the moon and rolled her body off the side of the mountain as a warning to all future threats.
A couple videos for an extra version:
Analysis:
Left: Coyolxauhqui Statue, J Paul Getty Museum, photo by Jonathan Cardy/ Right: Head of Coyolxauhqui; circa 1500; diorite; 80 x 80 x 65 cm; National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico City). As usual, she is shown decapitated and with closed eyelids, as she was beheaded by her brother, Huitzilopochtli.
Coyolxauhqui was and is seen often as the villain of the story, which seems pretty obvious, but after reading [Un]Framing the "Bad Woman" by Alicia Gaspar de Alba I got angry for Coyolxauhqui. As there are so many versions, these are part of a longer and more in-depth story. This analysis is really cool and goes into the extra backstory behind the characters. For a quick example Coatlicue and her family served other gods, as evidence of her sweeping in a temple as a service of penance. For what, I don't know; for whom, I also don't know. And then Huitzilopochtli was getting his new unknowing and nonconsensual mother (sounds like the women in every story involving Zeus) to start a new religious following and to start building a new temple. People don't often care for being told that they can't follow their own religion anymore (we know what happen with Akhenaten in Egypt or anytime any of the European monarchies switched sides of Christianity) so protecting what we know is completely fair. There's more to all of these stories that have be told, and we can't pretend that the Spanish Conquest didn't play into the twisting tales. Summarized from Gaspar de Alba, the Christian conquers would have approved of a peace-bringing immaculately conceived son into the world and starting a new religion, therefore, anyone against them is evil. This dives far further in depth than I'm planning on going in this blog so...
Going back to the older history, but not much older since the Aztec Empire was only ~90 years old at the time that Cortez worked with a ton of other Indigenous groups of the region to take them down. (That's another long interesting story.)
Anyway, with chemical analyses we can look at the original cylinder and the vibrant colors to see how much it would stand apart from its surroundings.
In the artwork above Coyolxauhqui is shown decapitated and ripped apart and surrounded by red blood. Blood is extremely important to the Aztec mythology, as it keeps the Earth from eating us (Overly Sarcastic Productions - The Creation of the Earth).
The heads of enemies that would be sacrificed at the top of the stairs of a temple pyramid would later be placed in a tzompantli, a skull rack. In some other areas in the Mesoamerican world (for example: from the Toltec culture in Chichen Itza) these were only symbolic, being carved out of rock. While there was human sacrifice, it wasn't always necessary, much like ushabtis in Egypt. Bloodletting was a common practice in the Maya and Aztec regions wherein the kings and queens would sacrifice their own blood by kings piercing their penises with a stingray spine and queens piercing their tongues and running a rope of thorns through the hole. Hardcore. The dripping blood catches on cotton strips, which were then burnt as offerings so the smoke goes to the Gods in the heavens.
Looking back at the Coyolxauqui stone, she is wearing a ritual blue feathered headdress, blue earrings are for the Mexica year sign, a special cheek symbol of a bell, bracelets, sandals, a serpent loincloth, a skull on a belt of snakes, and her limbs are tied with ropes of snakes. To the Mexica, nudity would have been shameful, and thus would have been another way of breaking down her power and influence (Klein, 1994: 22). The body has sagging breasts and wrinkles even though her head is shown as young to symbolize the differences between the ages of new and full moons.The last influence we see reflected from older cultures like the Olemca and Maya, are the faces on her elbows and knees, remind onlookers of snakes, skulls, and the Earth Monster.
Visitors to Mexico City, as built directly upon Tenochtitlan can still feel the intimidation factor from the stone at the base of Templo Mayor. *So after this pandemic is past, go and see it :)*
More general Wikia info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyolxāuhqui
Citations:
"Aztec Skull Trophy Rack Discovered At Mexico City’S Templo Mayor Ruin Site". The Guardian, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/21/aztec-skull-trophy-rack-discovered-mexico-citys-templo-mayor-ruin-site.
Braswell, Geoffrey. Archaeology study abroad course. September, 2013.
Cartwright, Mark. "Coyolxauhqui." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 11 Feb 2016. Web. 19 Mar 2020.
de Alba, Alicia Gaspar. [Un] framing the" Bad Woman": Sor Juana, Malinche, Coyolxauhqui, and Other Rebels with a Cause. University of Texas Press, 2014. pp. 175-202, https://books.google.co.nz/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Fy7TAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=Coyolxauhqui&ots=TU294N7bFQ&sig=qjTDGAz6YzAUBqLw6HvrV8lP_xo#v=onepage&q=Coyolxauhqui&f=false.
Klein, Cecilia (1994). "Fighting with femininity: Gender and war in Aztec Mexico". Estudios de cultura náhuat. 24: 22.
Milbrath, Susan. “Decapitated Lunar Goddesses in Aztec Art, Myth, and Ritual.” Ancient Mesoamerica, vol. 8, no. 2, 1997, pp. 185–206. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26307242.
Olvera, Alfonso. "The Legend Of Coatlicue & Coyolxauhqui | Inside Mexico". Inside-Mexico.Com, 2016, https://www.inside-mexico.com/the-legend-of-coatlicue-coyolxauhqui/.
Taliesin, David, and View →. "Coyolxauhqui: Aztec Moon Goddess". Sabbats And Sabbaths, 2018, https://sabbatsandsabbaths.com/2018/04/05/coyolxauhqui-aztec-moon-goddess/.
Townsend, Richard F. (2009). The Aztecs (3rd ed.). London: Thames & Hudson. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-500-28791-0.
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