ABSTRACT
In the Museo Templo Major, in Mexico City, lies an awesome stone relief, oval in shape, 11 feet in length. As we study the complex forms carved into the stone’s roughly flat, upper surface, we slowly make out the dismembered parts of a female body. Eventually we realize we are looking at the body of a goddess, broken into fragments. The severed limbs, seen in profile, are carefully laid out, in pinwheel fashion, around the frontal presentation of the naked torso, all carefully contained in the oval outline. The contortion of her body parts, the bones which protrude from her cruelly dismembered limbs, the fanged masks mounted on her knees and heels, the snakes tied around each limb, and the skull attached to her belt spell out an image of gruesome death and dismemberment, darkness and chaos. This is an image of the Aztec goddess Coyolxauhqui. The Aztec myth tell us that Coyolxauhqui was outraged when she discovered that her mother, the Great Goddess Coatlicue, had been mysteriously impregnated. Driven by her sense of dishonor and her rage, she summoned her 400 brothers and together, intending to slay their mother, they advanced upon her. Just as they arrived, the Great Goddess gave birth to her divine son, Huitzilopochtli. This young savior god, painted blue, covered with feathers, and equipped with spear and shield, immediately beheaded and dismembered his half-sister, Coyolxauhqui, whose body fell, breaking into pieces, down the side of the great Serpent Mountain. This awesome stone relief presents a detailed portrait of Coyolxauhqui’s broken, dismembered body and thus details the agony of this harrowing tale (Moctezuma 1992: 14–18). https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315811901/65bf8a11-1749-4820-87ae-6bbdb6ac4b0b/content/figu6_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
