Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos (review)

One of the most moving passages from Nahua legends, inscribed on the wall of the Mexican Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia, tells of the creation of the world by the gods, gathered at Teotihuacan: "When yet all was in darkness, when yet no sun had shone and no dawn had broken--it is said--the gods gathered themselves together and took counsel among themselves there at Teotihuacan." This image is one of the many that Kay Almere Read uses to explicate the relationship between time and sacrifice in the Nahua cosmos. Read, a scholar of comparative religions, focuses this book on the explanation of one particular glyph discovered in the excavation of the Templo Mayor in downtown Mexico City. This glyph commemorated the Nahua day of Two-Reed. That particular day in the Nahua calendrical cycle was tremendously important because, according to legend it was the day of the world's creation by the gods, there at Teotihuacan. Read's analysis is a complex study of the interaction between history, myth, sacrifice, and the notion of time among the Nahua. To summarize it in a few words is exceedingly difficult, although it is possible to look at some of the major themes which she develops.

The book is divided into two large sections. The first section is entitled "Binding Reeds: Paradigms of Temporal Transformations." This section has three chapters, "Timing Shapes;" "Shaping Time;" and "Timing and Shaping People." The second section is "Burning Hearts: Processes of Sacrificial Transformations," with chapters "The Cosmic Meal," "Burning and Binding Fires," and an Epilogue. In addition Read has provided the reader with two very useful appendixes: one a glossary of Mexica names and terms, the other a description of the working of the Nahua calendar.

For Read, central to understanding the Nahua is the cycle of birth, death, destruction, regeneration. Just as living things are born, die, decompose, and provide nutrients for other living things, so the entire world undergoes periodic transformations. The date Two Reed is significant because it is the starting point for one of these creations, in fact the most recent. The celebration of that starting point included human sacrifice, just as the gods had sacrificed themselves at the outset of the era to begin the process of creation.

Read highlights some significant issues, and she raises important questions. Among criticisms, it is strange that the book is entitled Aztec Cosmos when Read herself recognizes that the term "Aztec" is inaccurate. Read is to be congratulated on her concern for detail, "Aztecs" notwithstanding. Yet, there are some curious conventions which she uses in the work. One is the spelling to Tecuciztecatl, the noble young god who became the moon. For reasons which are unclear, Read spells this "Tecuiçiztecatl." The use of a "ç" before "i" is indeed curious. When Nahuatl was transcribed in the sixteenth century, the friars used the "ç" in those contexts where the "z" sound was needed but where the letter was followed by "a," "o," or "u", considered hard vowels in Spanish. Consequently having a "ç' before an "i" is inconsistent with the traditional orthography. Moreover, Tecuciztecatl and Tecuiçiztecatl are pronounced differently and have different underlying meanings. The author also has the disconcerting habit of putting common words in italics for emphasis. This is especially true of the word "death." It frankly becomes excessive and consequently detracts from the important conclusions the author brings us.

The work is a solid and close analysis of Nahua creation-destruction legends, some of the linguistics behind them, and their role in understanding human sacrifice. The bibliography is certainly adequate, although at least one important work is missing, Jill Leslie McKeever Furst's, A Natural History of the Soul . This is especially apparent in Read's discussion of the ihiyotl and tonalli , aspects of the Nahua soul central to McKeever Furst's book...