The Mexican Aztecs Essay

Being notoriously devout, the Mexican Aztecs celebrated Coyolxauhqui, the moon goddess, one of the most important relief sculptures connected with their culture. Coyolxauhqui, according to Aztec tradition, alludes to the phrase “Painted with Bells.” Like their cultural and traditional forebears, the cultural Aztecs used art as a symbolic instrument to further their cultural dominance and diversity. Coyolxauhqui does not openly replicate and emphasize the essential components of the religious Aztecs; rather, it imposes notable artwork and sculptures, particularly in significant Mexican sites like Tenochtitlan. It also gives a reminding picture of the Aztec’s domineering power as well as wealth which permitted the manufacture of symbolic and spiritual sculptures.

With a touch of an original form of paintings, the unique type of Coyolxauhqui statue, carved in the lowest parts of Huitzilopochtli temple relief is about 11 feet in diameter; it also gives a presentation of Coyolxauhqui female deity. There exist bell extensions on the face of Coyolxauhqui. These golden bells make a distinctive decoration on Coyolxauhqui’s cheeks. Unique kinds of feathers, as well as balls of down, makes her hair appear more attractive. Coyolxauhqui has explicit earrings and fanciful bracelets hence making her stand out.

According to the Aztec mythology, Coyolxauhqui was the sole daughter of Coatlicue, the goddess of the earthly world. Coyolxauhqui being one of the most powerfully endowed goddesses in her specific and distinct measures plotted a scheme to do away with her mother’s life upon the discovery that her mother was bound to a mysterious kind of pregnancy. Coyolxauhqui, being carried away with shame concerning her mother’s pregnancy, she advanced methods to recruit about four hundred of her brothers, that is, the stars within the heavens, to execute her mother. However, this kind of plot became unstuck when one Huiztnaua lost his heart hence deciding to send a warning to the still unborn Huitzilopochtli. While execution plans continued to mount, Coatlicue delivered a fully grown and a mature son, Huitzilopochtli. Fully armed and in combat gear, Huitzilopochtli held the destiny of becoming the warring and the conquest god of the Mexican Aztecs.

Huitzilopochtli came for the vengeance and the rescue of his mother by initiating the killing of who would be his mother’s executioners, that is, his brothers and sisters whom he related to halfway. Coyolxauhqui gets killed last, and her body parts became dismembered within the heavenly environments where her head assumed the moon’s role. Huitzilopochtli used his mighty weapon, the fire serpent which primarily operated like the sun’s ray. Such an incidence would then allow Coyolxauhqui mother, Coatlicue to see her daughter’s influence over the moon’s cycle as well as her death in every period of thirty days.

Huitzilopochtli would then spark inspiration to the Aztec military to achieve glory killed his sister Coyolxauhqui on the same mountain apex where he was born. According to the contemporary Aztec history, it was on this mountain’s top where the hearts belonging to the captured battling warriors got cut out, and the warriors’ bodies thrown away from Templo Mayor, the Aztec temple. The regions at the hill’s bottom, where Coyolxauhqui dedicated stone laid, such bodies would then get beheaded and dismembered. According to the Aztecs, the Coyolxauhqui mythology had morphed from being associated with cultural imaginations and belief; it was now considered a cultural and religious ritual in equal measures.

The mythology bound to Coyolxauhqui’s eventual demise gets a commemoration from a distinguished stone like disk called the Great Coyolxauhqui Stone. This stone got excavated from the Templo Mayor’s basal foundation in Tenochtitlan. The goddess bound to the Coyolxauhqui stone only has a skull which has a warrior’s belt, a bell on the part of her cheeks, and a well-designed headdress which has eagle-like down feathers. The Templo Mayor shrine was particularly a twin to Taloc, the rain god and Huitzilopochtli the warring god. Coyolxauhqui’s temple was the place where humans became sacrifices to the Aztec gods. Human bodies that had been beheaded and chopped could then get tossed down in a step-wise manner just like the mythical Snake Mountain whose vicinity to the Templo Mayor was quite significant.

Besides the significance of Huitzilopochtli, the stone also became a sound warning to the Aztec’s enemies who likened themselves as the victorious and the warring Huitzilopochtli. The opponents who got defeated led towards the Temple Mayor steps for divine purposes; the defeated would soon receive information that reminded them that they were no different to the case which had fallen on Coyolxauhqui’s ultimate defeat.

Sacrifices catalyze the legitimization and the formation of distinct cultural relations. In Mexico’s contemporary world, sacrifices bound to rituals has morphed religion to conquer everyday’s living reality. The growth and the development in the Mexican economic base, having considered several forms of the neoliberal periods, the national economy of the Mexicans has become associated with sacrificing the citizens who form an insecure working class and groups.

The mandate to embark on ritual sacrifices have to get adhered to; several types of struggling and staunch resistance develop even if measures to enact discipline get implemented.

In the Mexican economic setup, nobody would consider being subject to sacrifice like Coyolxahqui. However, this kind of sacrifice is meant to create a way that strengthens and conquers. Also, it should give focus in initiating prosperity as well as growth among the Mexicans. Such an approach not only applies to Mexico, but it also focuses on identifying the vengeful gods and the bureaucrats who form part of the Mexican economy. Slaves in Mexico have always been bound to sacrifices in a measure to enhance the betterment of their motherland openly. Sacrificial capitalism affects the geography of Mexico. Currently, most of the law-abiding Mexicans, bound to capitalistic sacrifices, have to respond to the influence of the economy. However, if they get to die, they have a staunch belief of a possible reunion with Cololxahqui in the heavens. The Coyolxahqui mask is, therefore, an essential aspect of the Mexican Aztecs religion and the temple. Temples gave a detailed Aztec approach to how they could view the world. Such forms of the Aztec imagery had to spread all across the Aztec territories.

Conclusion

After the decline of the Aztec territorial empire, there was a fall in the production of an indigenous form of art. Therefore, with the disintegration of the Aztec empire, various kinds of the Aztec designs become bound to the specific works of localized artists. These local artists had been employed by the friars of Augustine to engage in particular measures that would lead to the beautification of their new churches back during the sixteenth century CE. Several forms of painting work, as well as manuscripts, could get produced until the culmination of the eighteenth century CE when the focus in the Precolumbian artistic work and historical alienation led to a more efficient investigation about what would have been lying in the foundations of the current cities and towns in Mexico. Such a focus pointed to the growing number of discoveries that concern the Aztec historical artifacts. In case of any form of doubt, history has proved that the Mexican Aztecs were partly among the passionate artists to have ever lived in the Mesoamerican periods.

Bibliography

Berdan, Frances F. Aztec archaeology and ethnohistory. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Insoll, Timothy, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines. Oxford University Press, 2017.

Manuel, Aguilar-Moreno. “Handbook to life in the Aztec world.” (2006).

Pasztory, Esther. “Aztec Art. New York: Harry Abrams.” Inc., Publishers (1983).