Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Tlaltecuhtli

A massive relief depicting the monstrous Aztec earth goddess on display in Mexico City, part of a major exhibit on the late Aztec state, one of the few pieces of Aztec stone sculpture that stills bears some of its original color. Not a pleasant deity:
Tlaltecuhtli was thought to swallow the sun every night and regurgitate it back out in the morning. She was also thought to swallow the hearts of victims sacrificed to her, so it was common to carve images of her on the bottom of stone boxes in which the hearts and blood of sacrificial victims where placed after being ripped from their bodies.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Any links to that exhibit?

John said...

Alas, no, the picture came from artdaily.org and the feature is already gone. They do that a lot.