Aztec Human Sacrifice

Blood Offering

 

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aztecs believed that the world was in a complex yet unstable balance susceptible to forces within their control.   In both public temples and within the privacy of their own home, Aztecs called upon the sacred forces and made offerings to them on a regular basis.   Ritual, prayer and thanksgiving were an integral part of the daily routine.   The Aztecs did what they could to keep an ordered and balanced world.   Individually, they tried to live prudently and modestly to achieve harmony with the forces that affected their lives.   As for dealing with the broader world, they relied on their priests to perform the appropriate ceremonies that would insure stability and continuation.   The earth required sustenance to continue its existence.   The sun needed strength-giving food to battle the darkness and appear in the dawn, and travel across the sky each day.   The waters, also, needed to be attended to or they would diminish and dry.   The Aztecs could not neglect the natural or supernatural forces (Boone 118).   If the world was to fall out of balance on a grand scale all would be destroyed and chaos would rule.   Life would end, and emptiness and darkness would prevail.   With less dramatic effects, small imbalances occurred all the time.   Drought or downpours, frost that destroyed crops, lunar and solar eclipses, and the stars that appeared at night were all indications of worldly imbalance and the Aztecs felt it was their obligation to correct them.   It was this obligation that was the basis for Aztec religion (Boone 117).            

            These natural forces had all been created through the sacrifices of the gods that the Aztecs worshiped.   The gods offered themselves in sacrifice to set the natural world on its course and created mankind with blood drawn from their own flesh.   According to Aztec myth, because the gods had created the world forces with their supernatural blood, the Aztecs believed that only human blood could sustain it.   The Aztecs felt no only an obligation to the world around them, but also considered themselves to be the people responsible for maintaining the cosmic system.   Believing that the gods prized the blood of humans above all, various forms of human sacrifice became a significant part of Aztec religion.   It is here that the fascinating Aztec practice of human sacrifice is rooted (Boone 118).

            Some of the richest and most detailed accounts of Aztec culture are provided by what are known as chroniclers.   A chronicler is anyone who wrote a description of Aztec culture in the decades immediately following the Spanish conquest.   These written sources are the largest and most detailed body of information on any of the New World peoples encountered by Europeans in the 16 th Century and form a priceless record.   The work of one chronicler, Friar Bernardino de Sahagún, stands as the most detailed and systematic first-hand account of Aztec culture.   Excerpts from his documentation of the Aztec human sacrifices that he witnessed will serve as the gateway into this analysis of human sacrifice (Smith 16).

            Sahagún was born in Spain in 1499 and traveled to New Spain as a Franciscan monk in 1529.   He helped found the College of Santa Cruz in Tlateloclo, where he instructed young Aztec nobles in Spanish and Latin and in turn learned Nahuatl from them.   Sahagún was interested in the precontact culture and strived to learn as much as he could about Aztec history, customs and especially religion.   He gained most of his knowledge through observation and interviews with surviving Aztec nobles in an attempt to acquire as much knowledge as possible about Aztec culture (Smith 17).

            A point of interest is the nature of documentation.   Primary sources, the basis of most knowledge about Aztec culture, are biased in some ways and must be treated with some caution.   The biased accounts served mostly as a glorification of their actions and a justification for their ill treatment of the Amerindians. Cortés gained greater glory by inflating the sizes of the armies he defeated, or the size of the cities he converted.   When Cortés and his army were criticized by priests and others for their destruction of the Aztec people and their property, he tried to justify his actions by portraying the Aztecs as terrible savages in great need of civilizing and conversion by the Spaniards.   Cortés defended his enslavement of the Aztecs by saying that “they are all cannibals, of which I send Your Majesty no evidence because it is so infamous.”   Bernal Díaz repeats a rumor he had heard that Montezuma used to eat “the flesh of young boys,” but he admits he couldn’t himself tell one meat dish from another (Boone, 78). These somewhat biased accounts have created a false impression of the Aztec religion as brutal, uncivilized and violent when, in fact, it is merely the result of a perceived debtor relationship between the Aztec people and the gods.   The myths that make up the complex Aztec religion established the rationale for human sacrifice (Smith 15).   For more information pertaining to Aztec myth please see the following websites:

           

http://www.pages.pomona.edu/~tlm02000/www/aztec_religion.html

http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/samples/sam43.htm

Excerpt 1:

 

Festivals and Sacrificed Performed Under the Signs of the Sixth

Month called Etzalqualiztl

 

. . . After the offering each day there came certain old men called Quaquaviltin, whose faces were painted black, their hair shorn with the exception of the top of the head where the hair was long (just the opposite of the tonsure of Catholic priests). These Quaquaviltin each day divided the offerings among themselves. This was the custom among all the priests and in all the temples, and while they fasted those four days, they awoke at midnight and for an hour they blew horns, shells and other musical instruments, similar to the singing of matins in the Catholic Church. After a certain number of them (probably those who were the musicians among them), had thus played, they all rose and went naked, without any covering, to the place where they kept the points of agave which they had cut on the previous day and brought home for that purpose, together with pieces of the same plant (which they put over the sharp points), and then cut their ears with small flint (stone) knives, and with the blood they tinted the maguey points; they also besmeared their faces with blood. Each one tinted as many agave points with his blood as his devotion called for, some only five, others more, and still others even less than five. After this, all the priests went to bathe irrespective of the cold, playing tunes on sea‑shells and whistles made of baked clay.

 

            This excerpt highlights the role of priests in Aztec religion and sacrifice.   The most important of the priestly duties in Aztec religion was the performance of rituals.  In addition to playing music at ceremonies as described above, priests performed a number of other rituals such as keeping the sacred fires burning in large braziers, and making numerous offerings to the gods.   They left food for idols and burned incense.   Incense made from the sap of the copal tree was offered at nearly all ritual occasions.   Priests used long-handled incense burners.   At one end was a shallow dish where the copal incense was burned, and the other end of the long handle was shaped like a serpent head.   Inside the hollow handle were small clay pellets that produced a rattling sound like a rattlesnake’s tail.   These censers, with their serpent symbolism, were often depicted in drawings of priests and ceremonies (Smith 213).   Some of the most important rituals performed by priests, however, were blood offerings.   The rationale behind priestly blood offerings is rooted in Aztec myth.   The gods sacrificed themselves to create the world and sun, and offered their own blood to create people.   Humankind owed a tremendous debt to the gods, and this debt could only be repaid through frequent offerings of human blood.   One form of blood offering, described in detail above, was bloodletting, also known as autosacrifice (Smith 215).  

            The god Quetzalcoatl performed the first act of autosacrifice when he bled himself to create mankind.   Other gods also bled themselves for the benefit of man and the natural world.   All people engaged in autosacrifice at some point in their lives, usually for the purposes agricultural or human fertility, however autosacrifice was practiced primarily by priests.   Human blood was linked to fertility in all Mesoamerican religions, and blood was the most valuable substance one could offer to the gods (Smith 215).  

            The most common act of autosacrifice, as described in this excerpt, was to pierce one’s earlobes or upper ear with pointed maguey thorns or other sharp instruments.   Sometimes other parts of the body were pierced, including the tongue, thigh, upper arm, chest, and genitals.   The most devout practitioners, namely priests, would pierce their flesh and then pull hollow straws or reeds through the hole.   Priests engaged in autosacrifice nightly. Due to regularity with which priests practiced bloodletting rituals, much of their body was scarred and mutilated (Carrasco 188).   Although autosacrifice was an important and prevalent ritual, it was only a substitute for the more powerful human sacrifice as described in the next two excerpts from Friar Sahagún.

Excerpt #2

 

Festival Held During the Signs of the Fifth Month, Which was Called Toxcatl

 

This festival was held under the signs of the fifth month, which they called Toxcatl. In this month they celebrated a paschal festival in honor of the principal god called Tezcatlipoca, or by another name Tlilacaoan, or Yautl, and by still other names Telpuchtli or Tlamat zincatl. At this festival they killed (sacrificed) a youth of great elegance of carriage (great fitness or perfect health and proportion) whom they had maintained for a whole year in constant delight. They said he was (represented) the image of Tezcatlipoca. Once this youth was dead, they immediately put another one in his place, whom they petted and spoiled for another year, and so on, always replacing the one they sacrificed, and they had a great number of them in readiness from which to choose the successor to the one they killed at the festival. They selected for this purpose the best looking men among their captives and kept them in the Calpixques; they took great pains to choose the most intelligent and best suited there might be, without the least physical defect. . . .

The young man thus chosen to die at the next feast went through the streets playing the flute, carrying flowers, and smoke‑sticks. He was free to be out day and night wherever he chose to go in town; he was always attended by eight pages, dressed like those of the palace, and he himself was given elegant and precious clothing by his master, for henceforth he was considered as a god himself. His whole body and face were anointed; his head‑ was adorned with white chicken‑feathers pasted on with resin; his hair was allowed to grow to reach the waist. . . . Twenty days before the feast these clothes were changed; they washed the dye off his skin, and they married him to four maidens, with whom he lived for these last twenty days of his life. They now cut his hair in the style worn by war‑captains, tying it like a tassel on top of the head with a very elaborate fringe and adorned that hair‑bundle with two tassels with their buttons, made of feathers, gold and techomitl very oddly made, and which they called aztaxelli. . . .

They took him to a small and poorly decorated temple which stood near the highway (road) outside the city at a distance of almost a league from it. As they reached the foot of the Ch, the young man mounted the steps by himself, and on the first one he broke one of the flutes he had played on during that past year of prosperity; on the second one another, and so successively until he had broken them all, and thus reached the top. There he was awaited by the Sitrapas or priests who were to kill him and these now grabbed him and threw him onto the stone‑block and, holding him by feet, hands and head, thrown on his back, the priest who had the stone knife with a mighty thrust buried it in the victim's breast and, after drawing it out, thrust one hand into the opening and tore out the heart, which he at once offered to the sun. In this manner they killed all those who were offered to Tezcatlipoca, but instead of throwing the bodies down the steps after the sacrifice as they did on other occasions, this young man was carried down these steps by four men into the court, where they cut off his head, which they stuck onto a pole called Tzompantli. Thus ended the life of this unfortunate youth who for an entire year had been petted and honored by everybody. They said that this (sacrifice) signified that those who had possessed riches and pleasures in their lifetime would thus end in poverty and sorrow.

           

This excerpt from Sahagún provides insight into the general pattern of Aztec sacrifice. Each of the 18 Aztec months had a distinctive series of ceremonies, which involved priests, rulers, nobles, and commoners alike.   These ceremonies were devoted to particular religious themes the most common of which was agricultural fertility.   Many of the human sacrifices took place as part of these monthly celebrations. The ceremony described above is from the festival called Toxcatl meaning “Dry Season” in honor of Tezcatlipoca meaning “Smoking Mirror”.   Most Aztec rituals began with nezahualiztl, a preparatory period of priestly fasting, usually lasting four (or a multiple of four) days.   The preparatory period for Toxcatl, as described above, is an exception to the typical preparatory duration and required an entire year of preparation.   This preparatory period also involved tozohualiztli (“nocturnal vigils”) and offering of flowers, food, cloth, rubber, paper, poles with streamers, as well as copaltemaliztle (“incensing”), the pouring of libations, and the embowering of temples, statues, and ritual participants.   Dramatic processions of elaborately costumed participants, moving to music ensembles and playing sacred songs, passed through the ceremonial precinct before arriving at the specific temple of sacrifice (Carrasco 188).  

            The victim of this ritual and rituals like these were not considered ordinary mortals.   They were viewed as deities whose deaths repeated the original sacrificial deaths of gods described in Aztec myth.   The key Aztec concept here was ixiptla, often translated as “deity impersonator.”   The preparations for a sacrifice began long before the actual cut of the knife.   A victim was chosen to become the god on a set date some time in the future.   Victims were carefully chosen to match the requirements for the god to be honored.   Most gods required warriors for their ixiptla although some were satisfied with slaves purchased for the occasion.   Some gods required children for his ixiptla, either purchased as slaves or the secondary offspring of nobles.   Women were sometimes sacrificed as ixiptla for female deities (Smith 217).  

            Through a series of rites, the human victim was transformed into the embodiment of the god on earth.   The transformation from human to ixiptla began with a physical and ritual cleansing.   Slaves purchased for sacrifice in particular had to be bathed carefully to ensure purity.   The cleansed victim was then dressed in the clothing and insignia of the god.   Once fully attired, he became the god and was addressed and worshiped accordingly.   The ixiptla carried out the rituals specified for that god, such as dancing, singing, and making special ceremonial processions through the city.   He was attended to by priests and given many luxuries, including delicacies to eat and women for sexual pleasure.   The greatly respected ixiptla spent his last days or months living as a god, and when the day of sacrifice arrived, he went with honor to meet his fate (Smith 217).

            Toxcatl fell at the height of the dry season.   The days were hot and dusty and many streambeds were running dry.   Reserves from the fall’s harvest were running low, and farmers were anxiously awaiting rain so that new crops could be planted.   The ceremonies of Toxcatl were dedicated to Tezcatlipoca in supplication for the start of the coming rainy season.   The culminating event of the Toxcatl ceremonies was the sacrifice of Tezcatlipoca’s ixiptla at the end of the month.   This impersonator, selected by the priests a year in advance, had to be a young man of physical perfection.   The impersonator was trained in flute playing, speech, and flower-carrying, and spent most of the year roaming the streets of Tenochtitlan with an entourage.   At the start of his month the ixiptla went to the tlatoani, who adorned him in the insignia and regalia of Tezcatlipoca.   He was given four young women, who symbolized fertility goddesses, as wives.   The entire group visited all parts of the city during this final month, leading up to the sacrifice at the Templo Mayor.   The “marriage” between Tezcatlipoca and the four goddesses occurred after nearly a year of abstinence and symbolized the coming of fertility following a long period of sterility or drought.   The sacrifice itself symbolically marked the end of the dry period (Smith 230).

            It is of great importance to note that in the Aztec descriptions of the sacrifice there is very little emphasis on the actual sacrifice.   For them, it was a public ceremony of transforming a man into a god, the luxurious display of this sacred captive, and the ultimate message that life on earth is not the real or important life.   It is the giving of life that leads to the renewal of the gods that is important (Carrasco 198).

 

Excerpt #3

 

The Ceremonies and Sacrifices Celebrated in the Second Month Called Tlacaxipeoaliztli

 

On the last day of the said month they celebrated a very solemn feast in honor of the god called Xippetototec, as well as in honor of Vitzilopuchtli. During this festival they killed all the captives they had, men, women and children. Before killing them, however, they celebrated a great many ceremonies, which were as follows: on the eve of the feast after midday they began a very solemn dance, and during the entire night they watched over the captives who were to die, in the house called Calpulco. Here they pulled their hair off the top of the head. This ceremony was performed close to the fire at midnight, when they also drew blood from their own cars to offer it to the gods, a thing they always did at that hour. At daybreak they took their captives to where they were to die, which was in the temple of Vitzilopuchtli. They were killed by the ministers (priests) of the temple in the manner told before, then they flayed them all, and for that reason this festival was called Tlacaxipeoaliztli, which means "skinning of men who, in turn, were called xipeme, or by another name tototecti; the first one of these names means “ skinned" or "flayed," the second "dead in honor of the god Toltec." The owners of the captives delivered them to the priests at the foot of the C6, who then dragged them up the steps, each priest his own prisoner, holding them by the hair, toward the sacrificial stone where they were to be killed, tearing out the heart of each one, which then was offered to the sun, as stated before. They then threw them down the steps, where subsequently, other priests flayed them. This all was done in the Cú (temple) of Vitzilopuchtli. The hearts they had thus torn out of the bodies and had offered to the sun and the other gods were thrown into a wooden bowl; these hearts were called quauhnoctli, and those who died after having their hearts torn out were called quauhteca; after the bodies had been flayed by the old men who were called quauquacuilli, they car­ried them to the calpulco, where the owner of each captive had made his promise or vow, and the body was divided (cut up), and a thigh sent to Mochtecuzoma for him to eat, the rest being distributed to other chief­tains or relatives, who went to eat it in the house of the man who had captured the victim. They cooked that meat with corn and gave each one a piece of it with its broth in a bowl with the cooked corn; they called that stew tlacatlaolli; after the meal followed general drunkenness.

As soon as this sham, or playful fight, was over, they would commence to knife such captives as were destined to die stabbed, while tied to the millstone. This time four would fight each of the captives, two who were dressed as tigers and two as eagles. Before the fight commenced they lifted shield and sword towards the sun, and then began fighting man to man, If the captive, tied to the stone, was brave and courageous and if he defended himself well, he would be attacked by two, then by three, and if he was still in a fighting condition, by all four of his tormentors. In this fight the four aggressors were dancing, making a great many turns (and fancy steps). . . . After this they made the captive stand on the round millstone; one of the priests of the temple dressed in a bear‑skin, who acted as a sort of godfather of those who had to die there, came and took a rope which was passed through the opening in the center of the stone and tied it around the captive's waist. He then gave him his wooden sword which, instead of knives (sharp edges) had bird feathers glued along the edge, and he also gave him four pine clubs with which to defend himself, and which he might throw at his aggressors (opponents). The owner of the captive leaving him thus, as stated, on the stone, went to his place and from there looked on to see what happened to his captive dancing there (on the stone). At once those prepared for the skirmish began to fight with their victim, one after the other. Some of these captives being very brave, tired their four combatants, who were unable to make them surrender. In such cases a fifth one, who was left‑handed, therefore using his left hand instead of the right, entered the fight, and he conquered him and took his weapons, felling him. Then came at once the one (priest) called Yooallaoa, who cut his breast open and tore the heart out. Some of the captives, after being tied upon the stone, became so faint‑hearted that they lost their courage, and since they took arms in such a discouraged condition they allowed themselves to be defeated much sooner, and their hearts were torn out right there upon the stone. Still others became at once terror‑stricken to such an extent that, refusing to take their weapons, they begged to be killed at once, so they took the man, in such a case, threw him on his back over the edge of the stone and the functionary called Yooallaoa cut his breast open, tore out the heart, offered it to the sun, and then threw it into a wooden "jicara" (bowl); another priest then took a piece of hollow cane and, inserting it in the opening where the heart had been extracted, dipped and dyed it in the blood, withdrew it, and offered that blood to the sun also.

 

            Humans were the most valued gift the Aztecs could offer the gods.   The greatest offering was the heart of a living victim and the festival described above by Sahagún describes one such process in detail.   Perhaps some 20,000 hearts were offered each year.   They were offered at every major ceremony and every monthly feast in the cities and towns alike.   These donors were war captives, slaves, or individuals chosen from the Aztec populace because of their special qualities.   Regardless of their lives on earth, it was believed that when these people died on the sacrificial stone they became divine beings who would accompany the sun.   The chronicles repeatedly stress that the victims went willingly to their fate (Boone 123). This excerpt from Sahagún describes in detail the sacrifice itself.   The sacrifice described above describes the feast known as Tlacaxipehualiztli, which means the Flaying of Men and honors the god named Xippetototec meaning Our Lord the flayed One.

            The different primary sources reveal a wide range of sacrificial techniques, including decapitation, shooting with darts or arrows, drowning, burning, hurling from heights, strangulation, entombment, starvation, and gladiatorial combat.   Most victims for sacrifice were enemy warriors captured in battle.   The captor sponsored the sacrifice, thereby gaining a varying amount of prestige based on the rank of the victim.   Captives were brought back from the battleground and housed until the time for their ceremony of transformation.   A war captive would have learned from birth that the most highly esteemed death he could face would be on the sacrificial stone, and his whole life was in preparation for such an end.   After his sacrifice, the captive would rejoice and forever live in abundance (Carrasco 187).

            The ceremony, which often lasted as long as twenty days, usually peaked when the captors and captives, dressed in fine clothing, sang and danced in procession to the temple where the captive was then escorted up the stairway to the techcatl, or sacrificial stone. Victims were quickly thrust onto the stone, where a temple priest cut through their chest wall with a tecpatl, or ritual flint knife.   The priest grasped the still-beating heart, removed it from the victim’s chest, offered it to the sun for vitality and nourishment, and placed it in a carved circular vessel called the cuauhxicalli. In many cases, the body was rolled, flailing, down the temple steps to the bottom, where it was dismembered. The head was cut off and the brains taken out.   After being skinned, the skull was placed on the tzompantli, or skull rack, consisting of long poles laid horizontally and loaded with skulls. In some cases, the captor was decorated, for instance, with chalk and bird down, and given gifts (Carrasco 190).        

            In honor of Xippetototec, described above, a gladiatorial sacrifice took place.   In this type of sacrifice an especially brave captive warrior was tied to a large, carved, circular stone and forced to fight a mock battle with an experienced Aztec soldier.   The victim was given a sword whose obsidian blades had been replaced by feathers, but his adversary was fully armed and dressed for battle.   In this way the city represents an ideal battlefield, the battlefield where nothing can go wrong for the Aztec warriors.   The captive was then stretched out on the sacrificial stone by six offering priests who extracted his heart and offered it to the sun.   The body of the slain captive was then rolled down the steps (Carrasco 202).   After the victim’s heart had been torn from his body, a priest would then flay the bodies, cutting the skin from the neck to the rear end and peeling it away in one piece.   Others wore the skins, taking up the garments and insignia of the deity impersonators to continue the impersonation.   

            Many sacrifices were followed by a ceremonial meal at the home of the family of the captor or sponsor.   Often the femur of the victim was hung up and displayed publicly at this occasion as described in the excerpt above.   At the special meal the captor’s family ate a portion of the victim’s body.   This was a highly religious occasion designed to honor the victim’s memory.   The victim was viewed as a symbolic kin relation of his captor, and this act of cannibalism was a sacred part of the whole ritual of sacrifice.   Only a portion of the body was eaten, for this meal had a symbolic not a nutritional significance.   After some sacrifices, the sponsor gathered up the blood in a bowl and drank it (Smith 218).   This anecdote of Aztec sacrifice raises the issue of cannibalism.   Cannibalism on a very limited level had a place in a handful of religious celebrations.   Human flesh was mostly eaten by only the principle actors in religious ceremonies including the lords, priests, and merchants, and their consumption of human flesh occurred within the ritual context (Boone 78).

            Also notice in this excerpt the specificity of the location of each part of the ceremony.   Aztec sacrifice was a special kind of violence carried out in specific ceremonial centers to help the Aztecs communicate with particular deities, forces, and sacred beings.   These sacred places served to limit the action to a certain ritual space and also provided mental and emotional focus to the practitioners carrying out the sacrifice.   The ceremonies were acted out in many ceremonial centers of the city and empire.   The greatest ceremonial precinct formed the axis of Tenochtitlan and measured 440 meters on four sides.   It contained over eighty ritual temples, skull racks, schools, and other ceremonial structures including the main high school of the city known as a calmecac. Various temples were constructed in honor of specific gods.   Other temples were constructed for specific purposes such as cooking and eating human flesh (Carrasco 187).   Aztec human sacrifice was a carefully planned process and while difficult to imagine for much of Western civilization, it is far from a purely barbaric massacre as it is sometimes portrayed.

References

Boone, Elizabeth Hill.   The Aztec World.   Ed. Jeremy A. Sabloff. Washington, D.C.: St. Remy Press, 1994.

Carrasco, Davíd, and Sessions, Scott.   The Aztecs: People of the Sun and Earth. Connecticut:   Greenwood Press, 1998.

Sahagún, Fray Bernardino De. A History of Ancient Mexico. Trans. Fanny R. Bandelier.           Nashville: Fisk University Press, 1932.

Smith, Michael E. The Aztecs. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

Townsend, Richard F. The Aztecs. Slovenia: Thames and Hudson, 1992.

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