Tlaltecuhtli

Did You Know?

• Midwives called on Tlaltecuhtli's aid during difficult births when an infant warrior threatened to kill the mother.
• The Mexica believed Tlaltecuhtli swallowed the sun at dusk and regurgitated it at dawn.
• Offering 126, found below the monolith, contained 12 thousand objects.

Representations in art

Tlaltecuhtli is usually shown as a squatting, toad-like being with huge claws, a wide-open mouth, and crocodile-like skin that stands for the earth's surface. Carvings often have blood streaming from her mouth or a flint knife held between her teeth, pointing to her hunger for human blood. Skulls decorate her elbows and knees, and she can appear with extra mouths full of sharp teeth across her body. In some images, she wears a skirt made of human bones and a border of stars, marking her original sacrifice. Many of her statues were made only for the gods, hidden on the bottoms of sculptures or on the undersides of stone boxes called cuauhxicalli, which held the sacrificial hearts she craved. She was also placed on the cornerstones of temples, like the pyramid platform at El Tajin. Her image appears on each side of Moctezuma II's 1503 CE Coronation Stone, next to symbols for fire and water. Historian Mary Miller thinks Tlaltecuhtli might be the face at the center of the Aztec Calendar Stone, representing the end of the fifth and final cosmos. In the Aztec calendar, she is the second of the thirteen deity days, with the date glyph 1 Rabbit.

Creation narrative

In the Mexica creation story, Tlaltecuhtli is described as a sea monster sometimes called Cipactli who dwelled in the ocean after the fourth Great Flood, embodying chaos before creation. The gods Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca descended as serpents and found her sitting on the ocean with giant fangs, crocodile skin, and gnashing teeth calling for flesh. They decided the fifth cosmos could not prosper with such a creature and set out to destroy her. Tezcatlipoca used his foot as bait, and Tlaltecuhtli ate it; in the fight, Tezcatlipoca lost his foot and Tlaltecuhtli lost her lower jaw, preventing her from sinking below the water. After a long struggle, they ripped her body in two—the upper half became the sky, the lower half the earth. She remained alive and demanded human blood as repayment. The other gods decreed that parts of her dismembered body would become features of the new world: her skin became grasses and small flowers, her hair the trees and herbs, her eyes the springs and wells, her nose the hills and valleys, her shoulders the mountains, and her mouth the caves and rivers.

Gender debate

One of the largest modern debates surrounding Tlaltecuhtli concerns the deity's gender. The name 'tlal-' translates to 'earth,' and 'tecuhtli' is usually rendered 'lord,' but 'teuctli' in Nahuatl has no gender, despite normally being used for men or male gods. Notable exceptions include the goddesses Ilamatecuhtli and Chalmecatecuhtli. In the Huehuetlahtolli collected by Horacio Carochi, 'tēuctli' does not mean 'lord' or 'señor' but is better rendered as 'esteemed personage' or 'noble.' While the name may be interpreted as masculine, the deity is most often depicted with female characteristics and clothing. According to Miller, Tlaltecuhtli literally means 'Earth Lord,' but most Aztec representations clearly depict this creature as female, and some sources call her a goddess. Other scholars like Alfonso Caso interpret her pose as a male Tlaltecuhtli crouching under the earth waiting to devour the dead. H.B. Nicholson writes that most evidence suggests the earth monster in the mamazouhticac position was conceived as female, but a male aspect was also recognized and occasionally represented, though subordinate to the female conception.

Monolith

In 2006, a massive monolith of Tlaltecuhtli was discovered in an excavation at the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan. The sculpture measures approximately 13.1 x 11.8 feet and weighs nearly 12 tons, making it one of the largest Aztec monoliths ever discovered, larger than the Calendar Stone. Carved in pink andesite, it presents the goddess in her typical squatting position and is vividly painted in red, white, black, and blue. Found broken into four pieces, the reassembled monolith shows her skull and bones skirt and the river of blood flowing from her mouth. Unlike most renderings placed face down, this monolith was found face up. Clutched in her lower right claw is the year glyph for 10 rabbit (1502 CE), the year ruler Ahuitzotl was laid to rest. The monolith is on display at the Museum of the Templo Mayor.