Aztec Sun Stone

Also Known As: Spanish Piedra del Sol; also called the Aztec Calendar Stone or Calendario Azteca, a name given to it by Antonio de León y Gama in 1792
Region/Culture: Mesoamerica and the Caribbean
Mythos: Aztec Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Mythological Objects
Mythical Attributes: The stone sets out the Mexica history of the world in a single carving, with the present Fifth Sun at its centre enclosing the four destroyed worlds that came before it.
Role in Mythos: It is the most complete surviving image of the Five Suns cosmology, made in the reign of Moctezuma II to tie his rule to the life of the current sun.
Relation to Humans: The Mexica likely laid it flat in the sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan as a ritual surface, and the National Museum of Anthropology reads it as a stone for gladiatorial sacrifice whose blood fed the sun. After the conquest it was buried, dug up in 1790, hung on the cathedral for nearly a century and turned into the best-known emblem of Mexico.

The workmen were levelling the main square of Mexico City when their tools struck something flat and broad, about forty centimetres under the paving. It was 17 December 1790. What they dug out over the following days was a slab of grey basalt more than three and a half metres across, lying face down in the wet earth, its carved side pressed into the ground as if someone had wanted it never to see the sky again. Someone had. The friar Diego Durán wrote that Archbishop Alonso de Montúfar, who held the see from 1551 to 1572, ordered the great carved stone buried so that the memory of the ancient sacrifice made on it would be lost.

The memory did not cooperate. The architect José Damián Ortiz de Castro reported the find, and it was hauled out with a double-pulley rig, ropes creaking under some twenty-four tonnes of rock. The astronomer and antiquarian Antonio de León y Gama came to look, decided it was a public calendar, and in 1792 published a study under that idea. He also talked the cathedral authorities out of burying it again, pointing to Italy as a country that put its ancient monuments on show. On 2 July 1791 the stone was mounted upright on an outside wall of the cathedral, and there it stayed, weathering in the open, for almost a hundred years. In August 1885 it moved to the Monolith Gallery of the museum on Moneda Street, and in 1964 to the National Museum of Anthropology, where it now presides over the Mexica Hall.

It is not a calendar. León y Gama’s label stuck so hard that the object is still sold on souvenir plates under it, but the stone does not count anything off. It is a cosmological statement in olivine basalt, a picture of how the world began, how it has ended four times already, and how it will end again.

Begin at the centre. A face stares straight out, its tongue carved as a flint sacrificial knife, and beside it two clawed hands each grip a human heart. The museum identifies the face as Tonatiuh, the sun. Other readings make it Tlaltecuhtli, the devouring earth, or a night lord the scholars call Yohualtecuhtli, and the argument has never been closed. Around the face spreads the great X of the day sign Ollin, movement, which names the present age: Nahui Ollin, Four Movement, the Fifth Sun.

Inside the arms of that X sit the four ages that failed. The account set down in the Legend of the Suns, a Nahuatl text of 1558, runs them in order. Under Four Jaguar the people of the first world, who were giants, were devoured by jaguars. Under Four Wind a great wind tore the world apart and the survivors became monkeys. Under Four Rain fire fell from the sky and people turned into birds. Under Four Water the flood came, and they became fish. Each sun is named for the day of its destruction, which is a grim way to keep a calendar of birthdays. The fifth world carries its ending in its name too. Movement means earthquake, and the Mexica expected this sun to die by one.

How the current sun began is told elsewhere, but the stone assumes it. In the darkness at Teotihuacan the gods built a bonfire and asked which of them would leap in to become the sun. The proud Tecuciztecatl ran at the flames four times and four times turned back from the heat. The humble Nanahuatzin walked into the fire without stopping and was burned up, and from that fire the new sun rose. The story’s lesson was not lost on the people who carved this stone. A sun bought with a god’s death has to be kept alive with more death.

Beyond the central image, a ring holds the twenty day signs of the Mexica count, read anticlockwise. Further out come bands of solar rays and precious-stone motifs, and around the whole rim run two xiuhcoatl, fire serpents, their bodies built of square segments with flames licking off them, their tails meeting at the top. At the bottom their jaws open face to face, and from each mouth a human head looks out. Nobody has agreed whose heads they are. At the top, between the tails, is a square date glyph, 13 Reed. One reading takes it as the year the Fifth Sun was born; others tie it to a historical year of the empire, and the dates proposed do not match.

The stone also carries a name. Set in the central disc is the glyph of Moctezuma II, Moctezuma Xocoyotzin, which places the carving within his reign, between 1502 and 1520. The museum puts it around 1512. The basalt itself came from the lava of the Xitle volcano in the south of the valley, a source the geologist Ezequiel Ordóñez identified in 1893, which means the block was dragged as much as twenty-two kilometres to the island city by human muscle. Today it is the colour of storm cloud. It was not then. A study by Roberto Sieck Flandes in 1939 found traces that the carving had been painted in bright blue, red, green and yellow, like much Mexica sculpture.

What the stone was for is the deeper question. The National Museum of Anthropology reads it as a temalacatl, a round platform on which captive warriors were tethered and made to fight in the rite called gladiatorial sacrifice, their blood offered to nourish the sun. Others see a giant ritual basin or altar. Most readings agree it lay flat, face to the sky, in the sacred precinct, and that the blood it received was the point. Picture is the wrong word for it. It was a working surface.

Its power, in Mexica terms, lay in what it asserted. The stone set the reigning ruler’s name inside the body of the sun, so that his authority and the survival of the world became one carved fact. It made the cosmic order visible and kept it fed. Its limits came with the same history. It could be buried, flipped face down, and renamed by a Spanish colonial scholar for a purpose its makers never had. During the Mexican-American War, Mexican writers claimed that United States soldiers used it for target practice, though the stone shows no such damage, and General Winfield Scott is said to have thought about carrying it off to Washington as a trophy. He left it. Twenty-four tonnes of basalt has its own ways of staying put.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Aztec Sun Stone?

The Aztec Sun Stone, or Piedra del Sol, is a carved basalt disk about 3.6 metres across made by the Mexica in the early sixteenth century. It shows the Five Suns cosmology, with the present age, Four Movement, at the centre and the four destroyed worlds around it. It is now in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.

Is the Aztec Sun Stone really a calendar?

No. The Aztec Sun Stone was named a calendar by Antonio de León y Gama after its discovery in 1790, but it does not work as one. It carries the twenty day signs and several dates, but it is a cosmological and political monument rather than a device for counting time.

Whose face is in the centre of the Aztec Sun Stone?

The National Museum of Anthropology identifies the central face as Tonatiuh, the Mexica sun god. Other interpretations make it the earth being Tlaltecuhtli or a night lord called Yohualtecuhtli. The face has a flint knife for a tongue and clawed hands gripping human hearts.

When and where was the Aztec Sun Stone found?

The Aztec Sun Stone was found on 17 December 1790 during works in the main square of Mexico City, lying face down just below the surface. It had been buried in the colonial period, and the friar Diego Durán wrote that Archbishop Alonso de Montúfar ordered it buried to erase the memory of the sacrifices made on it.

What was the Aztec Sun Stone used for?

The National Museum of Anthropology interprets the Aztec Sun Stone as a temalacatl, a platform used for the gladiatorial sacrifice of captive warriors whose blood was offered to the sun. Other scholars see it as a ritual basin or altar. It was most likely laid flat in the sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan.