A ceramic vessel in the form of Tlaloc, the god of rain, water and fertility, shows him with a crown of heron feathers, fanged teeth and goggle eyes. He had the ability to cast lightning bolts to cause illness.
:Although their civilization endured merely two centuries, the unparalleled sophistication and complexity of the Aztec empire is revealed through the artifacts unearthed from this remarkable Fourteenth Century Mesoamerican culture. The relics from the period, both the sacred and the mundane, reflect the spiritual, social and economic aspects of a multifaceted culture.
"The Aztec World: A Unique View of a Mighty Empire," comprising approximately 300 objects, is on view at the Field Museum through April 19. The exhibition delicately balances views of both art history and the anthropological study of Aztec society.
The objects themselves are drawn from the collections of the
Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Histori
a and the Templo Mayor Museum in Mexico City, as well as the Field Museum. Additional items have been drawn from the collections of numerous other institutions in both Mexico and the United States.
The Aztecs were largely nomadic until they migrated from the north and ultimately settled on several islets in Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico. In 1325, they founded the city of Tenochtitlan, now central Mexico City. While the site had been occupied as early as 10,000 BC, the Aztecs are credited with having embarked on major development. They drained marshes and laid out chinampas where they planted crops, sometimes harvesting as many as five times per year because of the richness of the soil.
A drawing from the warrior section of the Florentine Codex of an eagle warrior, left, and a jaguar warrior depicts them with macuahuitl fitted with obsidian blades, with the sun in ascendancy. Each is adorned with feathers, which had special significance in the Aztec belief system.
They created canals and aqueducts, expanded the islands and built causeways. They constructed sewer systems to recycle human waste as fertilizer. They had richly furnished palaces, paved streets, rich fabrics and gold and silver jewelry with precious stones. They established highly refined legal, astrological, engineering, health and cultural systems. Art, music and dance were important; while they did not write, they used pictographs and hieroglyphs.
At its height, Tenochtitlan was home to 200,000 inhabitants, rivaling the European capitals of Paris, Rome and Madrid in numbers and sophistication. The city occupied the better part of a bowl-shaped valley that was 40 miles in diameter. Through conquest, the empire expanded throughout the Mesoamerican basin, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The Aztecs created a highly advanced economy, centered on markets where merchants and citizens traded tools, weapons and jewelry made from obsidian, greenstone and cloth, as well as services and commodities like salt and lime. At its zenith, the main market at Tenochtitlan is believed to have attracted as many as 60,000 daily visitors. Commerce and social interaction were equally vibrant.
The ceremonial center of Tenochtitlan was the Templo Mayor, which was discovered when an eight-ton statue of the Aztec goddess Coatlicue was unearthed during the 1978 excavations of the Mexico City cathedral. The Templo Mayor was a large double pyramid; it was the principal Aztec temple, the embodiment of the Aztec belief system, which centered on the sun.
