Time, history, and belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico 9780292731400, 9780292797956, 9780292731394

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Illustrations (page ix)
Preface (page xi)
Acknowledgements (page xv)
1 Time and the Interpretation of Other Cultures (page 1)
2 Outside the Focus (page 29)
3 Reinterpreting Aztec Perspectives (page 48)
4 Why the Aztecs Manipulated Time (page 70)
5 The Ripples of Time (page 110)
6 The Colonial Transition (page 137)
7 Time and Analysis (page 153)
Appendix: Pronunciation Guide (page 167)
Notes (page 169)
Bibliography (page 193)
Index (page 211)

Citation preview

Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico

Time

History and Belief in

> Aztec and Colonial

> Mexico

+>

Ross Hassig 0 O O O O

O O O O O O O

University of Texas Press, Austin 5 O O O O O O O O

Copyright © 2001 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2001

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819.

The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997} (Perma-

nence of Paper).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hassig, Ross,1945Time, history, and belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico / Ross Hassig.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-2.92-73139-6 (cloth : alk. paper]— ISBN O-2.92-73140-X (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Aztec calendar. 2.Aztecs—History. 3. Aztec cosmology. 4. Manuscripts, Nahuatl. 5.Time— Social aspects—Mexico. 6.Mexico—History— Spanish colony, 1540-1810. I. Title. FI219.76.C35 H37 2001

529’.32978452—dc21 00-041783

To Professor G. William Skinner an exacting mentor who has made it a rewarding journey

Contents

Illustrations 1X Preface X1

Acknowledgments XV

I Time and the Interpretation of Other Cultures I

2 Outside the Focus 29 3 Reinterpreting Aztec Perspectives 48 4 Why the Aztecs Manipulated Time 70

5 The Ripples of Time IIO 6 The Colonial Transition 137

7 Time and Analysis 153

Notes 169 Bibliography 193 Index 211

Appendix: Pronunciation Guide 167

Illustrations

Figures

1-1. Calendar wheel showing xihuit] months IO

1-2. Trecena from Codex Borbonicus 12 1-3. Folio 34 [New Fire ceremony} from Codex Borbonicus 18

1-4. Great Temple in Codex Ixtlilxochitl 20 1-5. Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada, front 22 1-6. Tied 2 Acatl glyph on Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada 23

1-7. Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada, left side 24 1-8. Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada, right side 25 1-9. Upper front of Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada 26 2-1. Calendrical glyphs on left front of the Pyramid of the

Plumed Serpent at Xochicalco 39 2-2. Xochicalco New Fire dates 4O

2-3. 1506—07 from Codex Telleriano-Remensis 42-43

2-4. New Fire pyramid 46

3-1. Calendar Stone 68

4-1. Panquetzaliztli ceremony in Primeros Memoriales 92 4-2. Atl-Tlachinolli from Coédice de Huamantla and Atl-Tletl

from Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada 107

5-1. Serpent head with 8 and 2 Acatl glyphs 115

5-2. Stone year bundle I17

6-1. Sundial and bell tower in Convento de Churubusco 146

Day 8

Tables

1-1. The 13 day numbers and the associated 13 Lords of the

1-2. The 20 day signs 9 1-3. The 9 Lords of the Night II 1-4. Voladores (and associated gods} in the Tonalamatl Aubin 13

1-5. The 18 months of the Xihuitl 14 1-6. Aztec kings and years of reign 21 1-7. Construction stages of the Great Temple 21

Night 175

3-1. Topan/Mictlan and associated gods 66 N-1. The 52 Xihuitl years and their associated Lords of the

Maps

4-1. Aztec empire 78 4-2. Valley of Mexico causeways 99

Preface

The Aztecs had a strange culture with bizarre practices and beliefs, or sO many conventional discussions would have it concerning one of anthropology’s favorite whipping boys. They have been at the center of my research for some twenty-five years, yet I have never seen them this way. To me, the challenge is not only to understand them in their own terms but also to understand them as a group seeking the same things that all groups seek: to make sense of their world and to inhabit it as best they could in rational ways, albeit from a different cultural perspective. Studying the Aztecs blends anthropology and history, though not always harmoniously. To oversimplify: history tends to emphasize the specific facts of the events of concern whereas anthropology tends to emphasize theoretical explanations. In both cases, the tendency is the result not only of the orientations of the respective disciplines, but also of their structural organizations. For academic purposes, history tends to be specialized by time and place, with a heavy emphasis on specifics as a way of knowing that time and place, whereas anthropology tends to be divided on the basis of theoretical issues. Anthropological studies have traditionally focused either on complex non-Western societies with long and complicated histories or on simpler societies for which there is little historical record. The former are often walled off as belonging to area specialists who possess a mastery of exotic languages, complex historical backgrounds, and archaeological data. As a result, these areas are often ignored by those who study simpler societies—traditionally the majority of anthropologists.

These traditional societies, however, are of little interest in and of themselves to most people, anthropologists included; their interest lies

xi

xii Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico

in being exemplars of some theoretical consideration that can then help enlighten us about other, similar, groups. Anthropology has a long-standing concern with its epistemological underpinnings, in part owing to an emphasis on the theoretical sinews that hold the disparate field together. But the struggle to create a satisfying intellectual structure has become self-consuming, leaving too little concern for explaining the world, even if this must be done con-

ditionally. Much of the current divisiveness in anthropology can be traced to the struggle over the proper relationship between theory and data. Today, the focus on how we know something has become greater than the focus on what we know; our inability to frame a completely satisfactory explanation has led to a paralysis that is belied by our own ability to negotiate the world around us; and whatever theoretical orientation is adopted tends to be applied to the world as a leitmotif more than as a way to engage the data, even provisionally. In short, theory dominates anthropology in a way that it does not in history precisely

because theory is what is shared in anthropology—what holds it together as a discipline and makes a Melanesianist interested in a culture in South Africa or lowland South America.

This disciplinary predisposition to emphasize theoretical over descriptive orientations merges in Mesoamerica with a second trend— that toward explaining matters through ideology and symbolism. This is not the only predisposition, of course, but more practical orientations tend to be found in such areas as politics and economics,! whereas

ideological approaches tend to dominate such intellectual issues as calendars,? notions of time,? and the nature of history.’ If there is one topic that is calculated to make most Mesoamericanists run screaming into the night, it is the calendar. Enormously complex and still incompletely understood, the calendar is almost mandatorily studied, even though it is of little practical concern to those of us who do not focus primarily on the ritual or symbolic. But the calendar is significant because the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican societies are generally considered to have a cyclical concept of time and, consequently, a cyclical notion of history that was largely displaced after the Conquest by the Western perspective of linear time and history, with the indigenous calendrical beliefs and practices sur-

viving only at the village or folk level. But the issue of time, which forms a major part of this book, has been only spottily examined in preand post-Columbian Mesoamerica. Whether it has been studied, and to

what extent, varies by academic discipline and time period. The pre-

| Preface xili Columbian era is especially rich in calendrical studies, but in the postColumbian era, little attention has been paid to time except to note the fragmentation and demise of the indigenous calendars (and, in passing, to clocks in architectural studies where they appear as part of the fabric of colonial buildings). This study seeks to make the Aztec calendar, and Aztec notions of time and history, more immediately useful and interesting by confronting the traditional interpretation. I assert that the traditional emphasis on time in Aztec culture as a cyclical phenomenon that patterns behavior is the result of a theoretical predisposition that short-circuits empirical research rather than being solidly grounded in the data, and that it is fundamentally miscast. My basic argument is that the Aztecs did not have a primarily cyclical notion of time or history; rather, they manipulated time by way of their calendar, for political purposes. And, while I do not discard the ideological approach wholesale, I nevertheless offer a different view of Aztec society. I argue that focusing primarily on Aztec ideology as a way of making sense of their behavior and society has produced an inadequate and seriously distorted assessment. Instead, I argue that the Aztec elite deliberately knit together their political ambitions and ideological beliefs into a coherent, self-referential justification for domination that simultaneously crafted the mechanism of imperial control. If my argument holds, it alters the prevailing notions of Aztec time and history; it also has implications for how we interpret the broader Aztec society, as well as affecting our approach to both pre-Aztec Mexican cultures and the colonial era, and, perhaps, casting doubt on some of the ways we view contemporary Mesoamerican communities.

In the first chapter of this book, I present the traditional explanation of Aztec time and history. This interpretation is then examined to show how it can satisfactorily explain three different types of evidence of Aztec perspectives, the Codex Borbonicus, the Great Temple (Templo Mayor} of Tenochtitlan, and a stone monument called the Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada (Temple of the Sacred Warfare}. In the second and third chapters of the book, I go beyond the issues examined from this perspective, raising others suggesting that the prevailing interpretation may not be wholly satisfactory and that other factors may need to be considered. In the fourth and fifth chapters of this book, I consider evidence suggesting that the Aztecs, in fact, did not have a cyclical notion of time, but a linear one and that their temporal concepts as embodied in the calendar were manipulated for political purposes. Then, as an

XIV Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico

elaboration on this political orientation toward time, I examine the implications for Aztec and other Mesoamerican societies. And in the sixth and seventh chapters of this book, I extend the analysis into the colonial era, where the shift to European notions of time has generally been passed over in silence, presumably because adopting these concepts has been seen as normal or as a logical part of general patterns of

assimilation and Christianization by the Spaniards. In fact, the imported temporal notions did not totally displace the indigenous ones, nor were they the entire suite of European temporal concepts, nor was their imposition of equal concern to all segments of Spanish society — suggesting a further political element in the Mexican adoption of European time.

Acknowledgments

Many people have contributed to the writing of this book, through explicit suggestions, critiques, references, and even casual comments that sparked a relevant thought. First among these is J. Richard Andrews, who in addition to being a sounding board for, as well as a valuable initiator of, ideas, has been tireless in lending his Nahuatl expertise to clarify concepts and translate passages. I am also greatly indebted to Professor Richard Henry of the Department of Astronomy and Physics at the University of Oklahoma, who offered considerable advice, information, and guidance throughout the astronomical sections of the book. Talso owe thanks to Chris Kyle for having read the complete manuscript, and especially to Tim Pauketat for semi-voluntarily spending every evening of a week-long research trip to Mexico reading the manuscript. The tenor of his criticisms and the colossal size of the recommended revisions reflect the eagerness with which he embraced the task. I would also like to express my thanks to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for a fellowship in 1997-98, to the School of American Research fora residential grant that year, to the Graduate College of the University of Oklahoma for a series of small grants that allowed me to pursue this topic, and to the Sainsbury Research Unit of the University of East Anglia for a research fellowship in 1999 during which I finished the manuscript. Without the support of these institutions and the encouragement and critique of both those in Santa Fe and in Norwich, this book would not have been completed. This book is dedicated to Professor G. William Skinner, an outstanding cultural anthropologist and an inspiring mentor and role model. Of all my academic mentors, I owe him the most. He showed me what was possible in anthropology and gave me his considerable support; whatever I have accomplished I owe in overwhelming measure to him.

XV

Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico

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W... Hernan Cortés stepped ashore in what is now Veracruz, he not only began the conquest of Mexico, he became the pivotal illustration of two conflicting interpretations of the nature of time and historical understanding. As widely understood, albeit debated, from one largely European perspective, Cortés’s arrival was a unique occurrence, a watershed event in the history of Mexico that forever altered the subsequent history. But another, indigenous, perspective, takes Cortés’s arrival as a predictable, even expected, event within a larger cyclical pattern, and as such it did not divide time as much as fulfill it. And had he not landed, someone else would have. So which perspective is correct? The debate thus framed is not so much about facts as about fundamental theoretical orientations. It is over our view of history, explanation, and how we see the relationship of conceptual constructs—be-

liefs—to actions. Facts may be adduced and brought to bear on the issues under debate, but what the facts are and how they are weighed depends in large part on the struggle over the interpretive strategies. That Cortés’s arrival is generally considered to have been a coursealtering event rests not just on the merits of the man and his actions, but on a Western linear perspective of time and the broader cosmological view to which it is inextricably linked.

Originating in a religious concept of a beginning and an end,! and later harnessed to the Enlightenment notion of progress,? change for I

2 Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico | the West is ongoing, continuous, and cumulative but not repetitive. In linear (or secular) time, change is directional and continuous, with the past differing from the present, which, in turn, differs from the future,° but it is without inherent direction. It merely passes.* To be recognized as linear, time must change in relation to something else. Sometimes this passage is phrased in religious terms: for instance, Christianity sees the significant beginning as dating from the birth of Jesus and continuing until His return, in a straightforward linear progression.* Basically, linear systems are tied to a beginning point from which time can be calculated endlessly, and they do not pose questions about the nature of the future because, while it is an outgrowth of the past, it is not deterministically embedded in it. But suppose time and history are not linear. There are two major competing perspectives that affect how people act in many of the world’s cultures. Those who see Cortés’s conquest of Mexico—or economic depressions, wars, and the myriad other historical occurrences—simply

as an unimportant incident in an otherwise essentially unchanging world embrace a steady state view of time, which yields a history embodying no significant change.* For them, time has neither a direction nor a presence: everything just is. Of course, few deny the reality of aging, or other such changes to the individual, but these are regarded

as ephemeral, whereas what is real and significant is enduring and unchanging, with no significant difference between past, present, and future.’ As a variation on steady state, time is sometimes seen as partially

stationary, with only a distant future, which is a position espoused by millenarian movements.* And there is evidence of the truth of this proposition, especially in earlier times and in relatively unsophisticated communities where things changed so slowly that it was largely imperceptible to the individual, or it was at least not seen as change. In an environment in which there is little seasonal variation, there is little temporal change to demarcate events clearly in the mind, with the result that, where they occurred becomes more important because this is the major element that changes and with which other events can be readily associated. As an example, Karl Barth® reports a highland New Guinea group with a poorly developed conceptualization of time whose members remembered events spatially, by what happened in terms of location rather than by time.!° And still others, who see Cortés’s arrival, economic depressions,

Time and the Interpretation of Other Cultures 3

wars, and so forth as part of a larger, periodic pattern, have effectively adopted a cyclical notion of time (and as one variant, spiral time combines linear and cyclical time). In cyclical perspectives, time is seen as changing in real but endlessly repetitive ways.!! I can see myself age, my children grow up, and my parents die, so things do indeed change, but these are subsumed under a larger, endlessly repetitive temporality in which fundamental conditions are unchanging in the long run. The past, present, and future may differ from each other somewhat, but they nevertheless repeat the same essential patterns found at other times. There can be purpose to life, as actions have meaningful immediate consequences, though not in the sense that what one does will make a difference ultimately.!2 Time changes on a small scale, but is essentially unchanging on a large one. Such notions of time are often tied to a cosmological scheme and assume that the future is inscribed in the present and is readable. Important events and their causes do not occur

ex nihilo; rather, their causes lie in earlier patterns that the present examples replicate. Thus, their significance is already established and one’s perspective is affected not merely by these events, but by one’s position in the cycle. There is evidence for this conceptualization of time as well. After all, life is comprised of many different cycles, among which are the work week and the annual cycle, embodying, as they do, seasonal agricultural, and ritual cycles which have proven to be powerful analytical devices.'!* But the domestic cycle is also an important aspect of our notion of the repetitive nature of life.!4 Thus while adherents of this perspective do see variations, so many examples can be placed in a cyclical conceptualization that it seems logical that all change can be seen in this way as well. Vedic India is often used to illustrate a cyclical time culture in which it was believed that the world went through a series of ages, with minor variations occurring within an overall repetitive pattern.'5 The same historical events can be viewed in very different ways under these three contrasting perspectives on time, so it is not merely the events and the importance one places on them that make history, but the temporal context we employ. Every culture grapples with the notion of time and conceives of it in its own way. Yet even in the West, where the commonsense, historical, philosophical, religious, and physical notions of time have been extensively considered and repeatedly reformulated, and a linear sense of time dominates, there still remains considerable diversity of opinion.

4 Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico

But even if the actual nature of time were, or could be, known, how various people conceive and use it can still differ. And how time is conceived in a society is embodied in its calendar.

Calendars tend to emphasize the cyclical nature of time,!* perhaps as a guiding cultural concept, but certainly because calendars inherently chronicle cycles, whether weeks, months, years, centuries, and so forth. Calendrical time is generally thought to be based on ecological cycles—typically the solar year with its seasons—and on days,!” which are intuitively obvious units of time and are widely recognized as such, though when they begin and end differs among cultures. Likewise, everywhere seasonality is at all pronounced, so too is the solar year. But beyond days and years, the way time is divided is remarkably varied. Some calendars use lunations but, otherwise, subdivisions of the year tend to be generated culturally without much regard for natural period-

icities.'§ For example, other than the inexact quartering of lunations, there is little basis in nature for a 7-day week.!? More complex time calculations tend to follow sedentism because these often depend on astronomical phenomena which cannot be easily recognized without long-term observations from fixed locations.”° Larger cycles begin to be employed when societies achieve the complexity of states. Often these lack an ecological basis and arise from numerological and other social considerations. Moreover, time becomes rationalized as smaller cycles, including the solar year, are made to conform to the logic of larger cycles, and vice versa. Time becomes a syn-

thetic, rational, intellectual system that is far more elaborate than the ecological or annual cycle. But once that happens, the calendar is forced

out of sync with nature because days and years do not always easily fit with the larger system, which tends to place greater emphasis on cycles than on the inconveniently uneven seasons.2! Among these calendrically significant astronomical events are equinoxes, solstices, and, even more complex, the rising and setting of the various planets and stars against fixed horizon markers.” Elaboration of a commonsense ecologically based calendrical system to one that recognized temporal patterns based on more complex astronomical phenomena (and numerological calculations from their mathematical system) must nevertheless have been an intellectual revelation on a par with the overthrow of the pre-Copernican world in the West.” Time is a difficult notion to define,* though it apparently moves in one direction only, as there are no known systems—biological or physical—that operate in a temporally contrary fashion.*5 But that is

Time and the Interpretation of Other Cultures 5

little comfort to the people and cultures that must deal with time, as it can be divided in many different ways and conceived in a multitude of fashions, each with its own consequences for how those people or cultures see their world. And while all state-level societies have some form of calendar, these are not conceived similarly and do not have the same social consequences.

The Problem of Aztec Time and History Mesoamerican cultures are generally considered to be characterized by

cyclical time. Of these, cyclical time is best documented among the Aztecs (Mexica) of central Mexico, who are most widely known from their fatal encounter with the Spaniards in 1519-21, their many human sacrifices, and their exotic gods and rituals. Decapitated though their culture was, the Aztecs have bequeathed a legacy of art, history, religion, myths, and cosmology that enormously enlivens the pantheon of great civilizations, adds an interesting and unusual perspective on the world, and continues to fascinate us centuries later. In the Aztec view of cosmology, this was not the first world.?’ Rather, the world had been created and destroyed four times previously over a span of 2,028 years. The first world, or Sun, was 4 Ocelotl (4 Jaguar),

over which the god Tezcatlipoca presided. Giants roamed the earth, but jaguars devoured them, ending that age. The next Sun was 4 Ehecatl

(4 Wind}, over which Quetzalcoatl presided, but this world was destroyed by hurricanes and all the people were turned into monkeys. The third Sun was 4 Quiahuitl (4 Rain}, presided over by Tlaloc, and when it was destroyed by fiery rain, the people were turned into turkeys. The fourth Sun was 4 Atl (4 Water), presided over by Chalchihuitl-Icue, and was destroyed by a great flood. After the destruction of the fourth Sun, the gods assembled and built a bonfire into which one was to throw himself as a sacrifice to begin the next world. When none of the great gods did so, the lowly Nanahuatl (Pustulous-one} jumped in, the fire purified him, and he emerged as Tonatiuh, the sun. But before he would begin his journey across the sky, all of the other gods had to perform sacrifices and give their own blood, whereupon he rose in the east as he has ever since. This world is 4 Olin (4 Quake} and will eventually be destroyed by great earthquakes, and the earth on which we live is but one level of the cosmological world. There are 13 levels of Topan (Above-us), the region above the earth, and 9 levels of Mictlan

6 Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico

(Place of the Dead], the region below the earth (counting the earth as level 1 in both cases).

As with all historically known societies, the Aztecs are inextricably in the past: what we know of them depends on our interpretation

of what they and others left—histories, descriptions, monuments, temples, and the archaeologically recoverable detritus of everyday life.

After all, it is not only social relations that are infused with cultural values, perspectives, and beliefs, but everything. Moreover, we do not view objects and events and then interpret them in terms of our beliefs, as that suggests some are knowable separate from our perspectives; rather, our beliefs are an inherent part of the object or event as we experience it. So how can we penetrate our own perspectives to yield a clearer view of the Aztecs? A standard way of interpreting cultures in Mesoamerica is the eminently reasonable strategy of doing so in light of their beliefs. Indeed,

how important ideology is in the operations of any society is a much debated topic,2* and one that is by no means limited to Mesoamerica. A prominent recent example of this approach is Marshall Sahlins’s interpretation of the Hawaiians’ reaction to the landing of Captain James Cook in 1779.9

Adopting the position that history is the reenactment of cultural structure, Sahlins holds that the Hawaiians, or at least the decision makers, interpreted Captain Cook as Lono, their year god. Because he appeared at the appropriate time and performed a series of acts that could be interpreted consistently with those expected of Lono, Cook was thought to be that god and was killed in accordance with Hawaiian rites for his return. Such an approach assumes that natives, or anyone, interpret objects and events in ways that are consistent with extant beliefs. This is entirely reasonable, for how else are people to interpret their world other than in terms of the known? And in the Aztec case, it is their cosmological views, myths, and notion of time that are taken as patterning their behavior.

Given the multiple interrelated periodicities of their calendar and the inherently cyclical nature of calendrical systems, the idea that the world was expressed in, and patterned by, temporal cycles is generally considered to have been very much a part of the fabric of Aztec life.*° Moreover, this notion of time necessarily had a direct impact on the Aztecs having conceived of history as cyclical as well, since notions

of time and concepts of history are strongly congruent, so that in a cyclical system, past events structured the present and patterned the

Time and the Interpretation of Other Cultures 7

future.2! And Aztec views of their own past are seen as inextricably woven into their cyclical notion of time. Aztec Calendar Focusing on time and its meaning for the Aztecs is problematic since they inherited a far older Mesoamerican calendar and tradition that traces back almost 2,000 years.2 The Aztecs themselves were doubtless ignorant of whatever purposes and motivations initially gave rise to the calendar—after all, they thought their major cultural traditions had been invented by the Toltecs, rather than earlier groups whose histories, traditions, and even presence had long been forgotten.*3 Thus,

Aztec meaning is not a historical bequest but a contemporary reconceptualization that arose based on the calendar’s structure and patterns, leaving unaddressed such issues as why it was so structured originally or why it functioned as it did. Nevertheless, their calendar was comprised of multiple interrelated periodicities and the resultant notion of time is taken to have had a direct impact on how the Aztecs conceived of history, which is generally considered to have been cyclical as well, with past events structuring the present and patterning the future.** The Aztec calendar was based on multiple interlocking sets of escalating cycles far beyond those of calendars elsewhere, so some brief consideration of their system is in order. Among the Aztecs, timekeeping was primarily a priestly responsibility, but it does not appear to have been esoteric knowledge that was jealously guarded by specialists to the exclusion of everyone else. The calendar system was taught in the elite schools, the calmecac, whose attendees included the sons of the upper nobility, some sons of lower nobles, and those who regardless of social class were destined for the priesthood.** Thus, many of the nobles had a potentially comprehensive understanding of timekeeping, and everyone—commoners and nobles alike—must have had a basic grasp of the calendar, at least as good as that of today’s populace of our own calendar system. As a result, most of the people could calculate market days, birthdays, specific gods’ days, and so forth. The priests, however, kept both the sacred and the secular calendars and, as scholars and scribes, were responsible for the written copies that survive today. The Aztec calendar, which shares the basic structure of virtually all

8 Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico

Table !-1. The 13 day numbers and the associated 13 Lords of the Day.

1. Xiuhteuctli Turquoise-lord 2. Tlalteuctli Lord-of-the-land 3. Chalchihuitl-Icue Her-skirt Is Jade

4. Tonatiuh He-goes-becoming-warm

5. Tlazolteotl Filth-goddess

6. Mictlan-Teuctli Lord-in-Mictlan

7. Centeotl Ear-of-maize-god

8. Tlaloc Land-lier

9. Quetzalcoatl Plumed-serpent 10. Tezcatlipoca Smoking Mirror 11. Chalmecateuctli Lord-who-is-a-resident-in Chalman 12. Tlahuizcalpan-Teuctli Lord-at-the-Dawn

13. Citlalli-Icue Her-skirt Is Stars

Mesoamerican calendars, is typically described as a series of interlinking cycles that generate increasingly larger cycles, culminating in the 52-year Calendar Round (Xiuhmolpilli, the Mesoamerican “century”) or the 104-year double Calendar Round (Huehuetiliztli) that structures their history.*° This 52-year cycle is built up by the intersection of two separate but interlocking cycles, one of 260 days, the tonalpohualli (the count of the days)?’ and the other of 365 days, the xihuitl (the year).%° Each of these cycles—26o0 days and 365 days—is the result of the combination of still smaller cycles. One of these smaller cycles is based on a series of numbers, from 1 through 13.39 A sequence rather than a count, these numbers do not function in a mathematical fashion, but only as a set of serial demarcators, although each day number is also associated with one of the 13 Lords of the Day.*° The numbers are indicated by a series of 1 to 13 dots, totaling the amount designated.*! The second basic cycle consists of 20 symbols of apparently arbitrary origin. Unlike the 13 day numbers, the 20 day symbols have no directly associated supernaturals. (Even though the glyphic depictions for the day symbols are sometimes the god of the element indicated as the referent symbol, they are meant to indicate the element and not the deity. Thus, for instance, wind is usually depicted by the sign for Ehecatl, god of wind. These two cycles of 13 and 20 run in tandem to produce day names, which are a combination of a day number and a day symbol.)

Time and the Interpretation of Other Cultures 9 Table 1-2. The 20 day signs. (These day signs are also repeated by Serna [1953 :120 —122], and Castillo (1991: 209] also says that the first day of the sequence is | Cipactli.)

1. cipactli alligator

2. ehecatl wind

3. calli house 4. cuetzalin lizard 5. coatl snake 6. miquiztli death

7. mazatl deer 8. tochtli rabbit

9. atl water 10. itzcuintli dog

11. ozomatli monkey

12. malinalli grass

13. acatl reed

14. ocelotl jaguar 15. cuauhtli eagle

16. cozcacuauhtli vulture

17. olin (earth) quake 18. tecpatl flint 19. quiahuitl rain 2.0. xochitl flower To illustrate, if the system began with the day number 1 and the day symbol cipactli, each cycle would continue running and, in our example, generate paired numbers and symbols until it reached 13 Acatl. At that point, while the day symbol sequence would continue, the day number sequence would begin again, with 1, generating the fourteenth day—1 Ocelotl. Both day and number cycles would then continue through 7 Xochitl, exhausting the day symbol series, which would then begin again with cipactli, while the day number sequence would continue uninterrupted with 8, producing the twenty-first day, 8 Cipactli, and so on. This compound cycle continues through 260 days before both 13-day-number and 20-day-symbol cycles reach simultaneous completion, having generated 260 uniquely named days (13 X 20 = 260) before the entire sequence begins anew.

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1-1. Late colonial indigenous calendar wheel depicting the xihuitl months. AGN-Historia, vol. 1, exp. 19, fol. 249; 1790 (Courtesy of the Archivo General de la Nacién, Mexico City)

Time and the Interpretation of Other Cultures Il

Table [-3. The 9 Lords of the Night. (This sequence is also provided textually by Serna [1953:163—164].)

1. Xiuhteuctli Turquoise-lord 2. Itztli or Tecpatl Obsidian or Flint

3. Piltzinteuctli Child-lord 4. Centeotl Ear-of-maize-god 5. Mictlan-Teuctli Lord-in-Mictlan 6. Chalchihuitl-Icue Her-skirt Is Jade

7. Tlazolteotl Filth-goddess

8. Tepeyollotli Heart-of-the-mountain(s}

9. Tlaloc Land-lier

Although these are the basic calendrical cycles, there is a complicating third one, also tied to the tonalpohualli, the 9 Lords of the Night.* The 9 Lords of the Night cycle continuously with the other two tonalpohualli sequences and have an important astrological role in determining good, bad, and neutral days on which to celebrate auspicious occasions or begin significant undertakings.** Their calendrical role, however, is poorly understood and they seem superfluous as it is the day number and day symbol cycles that combine to produce the 260day tonalpohualli cycle. Although the tonalpohualli cycle is produced from both the 13- and the 20-day series, contrary to Seler’s emphasis on the 20-day cycle,* it is the 13-day-number series that structures it. It is the primacy of that cycle that organizes the tonalpohualli into periods of 13 days** (conventionally called “trecenas” in Spanish}, with each such period being dominated by a god or gods.*” This means that each day in the tonalpohualli cycle is under the influence minimally of one Lord of the Day, one Lord of the Night, and at least one god for the entire trecena period, plus the associated voladores (fliers) tied to each of the 13 days.** The voladores are not identified by name in colonial text sources, so their individual identities are debated (I am following Seler*? and Caso}. In one manuscript, the Tonalamatl Aubin, the voladores also have associated gods protruding from their beaks so there may be yet another god for each day.®!

The other major calendrical cycle is based on the solar year, or xihuitl, and is comprised of 18 months of 20 days each. The 20 days

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.

44 Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico

consistently in the first quarter of the year (from late January through early March}.@ This means that the last day of the 5-day nemontemi period of the last year of the previous Calendar Round would be January 31, so that the start of the year would be on February 1, if we use that date. This is the case both as an historically recorded matter and

as a logical one. The third fact that helps date the New Fire ceremony is that the sacrifice of the captive on whose chest the fire would be rekindled for the New Fire ceremony occurred when the Pleiades

reached its zenith at midnight. These three facts, all recorded by Sahagitin in the same source, pinpoint the date of the New Fire ceremony. The first two indicate that it was midnight before February 1 (February 12 Gregorian). While this date seems quite specific, in February or thereabouts, Sahagtin’s third statement relating to the zenith (within 5°, the range of variation for naked-eye astronomy) of the Pleiades at midnight at the Hill of Huixachtecatl would place the ceremony in 1507 on October 26 (Novem-

ber 6 Gregorian) as an equally certain mathematical fact. Though both facts are firmly and simultaneously attested, both dates cannot be true. Rafael Tena® accepts the astronomical argument as producing the more certain date and argues that the New Fire ceremony was not held at the end of the Calendar Round, but on November 6 (Gregorian) in the month of Quecholli. To reconcile this with the December 9g date for the New Fire ceremony in the Cronica mexicana,*®’ however, he says it was then advanced 30 days to coincide with the feast of Panquetzaliztli, which was also the day of Huitzilopochtli’s birth, during which festival the heads of the sacrificial victims were put on the skull rack.® Is this, then, when the New Fire ceremony was held? Sahagtin offered some support for this view in the Primeros Memoriales,® where he stated that the year began on 1 Tochtli but the New Fire ceremony was on 2 Acatl, which contradicts the aggregate of his Florentine Codex statements. Yet accepting this interpretation means directly contradicting the vast majority of sources that describe it as occurring at midnight on the last day of the ending Calendar Round, which was in February or March. These two equally specific and fixed times—the historical date and the astronomical occurrence—are absolutely irreconcilable. There must be a problem with the data as presented, and there are three major possible sources of this error. First, perhaps the early Spanish priests—none of whom witnessed

a New Fire ceremony—erred in stressing the Pleiades as the pivotal

Outside the Focus 45

celestial marker simply because it was a common one elsewhere.” In early February, the star cluster Praesipe, which is similar to the Pleiades but somewhat fainter, reaches its zenith at midnight,”! and the two clusters may have been confused in the accounts. This seems unlikely, however, since the Aztec priests watched the Pleiades regularly and sounded a trumpet when they reached their zenith.” Second, when the Calendar Round ended (on February 1), the Pleiades would reach zenith at sunset, and perhaps that is the key marker rather than zenith at midnight. After all, without some means of keeping time other than by the sun—say, a mechanical clock—how could the Aztecs determine that it was, in fact, midnight? The Pleiades reaching its zenith at midnight cannot both be the definition of midnight and a means of establishing it. Indeed, it seems clear that what was called midnight was the Pleiades’ zenith, whenever that occurred, and not the sun reaching a position 180° from zenith. Third, Sahagin may simply have been in error. After all, he never witnessed what he described, and this aspect of his description contradicts others. It cannot all be true, but I will leave the issue for the moment. Nevertheless, there was one certain change in the New Fire ceremony—not a shift from February to November, but one from the year t Tochtli to the year 2 Acatl. The question is, why? Any change can be made most easily if it is consistent with cultural traditions and disrupts the existing situation to the least extent possible. If any calendrical change is contemplated, the logical time would be at the end of the Calendar Round, when the lesser cycles also reached completion. But while the movement of the calendar at that

point makes a lot of sense, why would the New Fire ceremony be shifted at all? Moreover, the New Fire ceremony shift was not merely temporal, but locational as well. Perhap:: some answers can be found by examining the history of the New Fire ceremony. Aztec chronicles record a total of eight New Fire ceremonies over the course of Aztec history, in 1143, 1195, 1247, 1299, 1351, 1403, 1455, and 1507.73 Because the Aztecs founded their capital of Tenochtitlan in 1325 (2 Calli),”4 only the last four New Fire ceremonies could have been

held there. When they founded their capital, they were a relatively unimportant group; they were tributaries of the Tepanec empire, which they and their allies overthrew in 1428.75 But even by 1455, although the Aztecs had subdued or co-opted most of the Valley of Mexico, the Chalca city-states in the southeast corner of the valley remained independent and openly hostile until they were finally conquered in 1464.”

46 i

onial Mexi , milstor i in Az tec and Colonial y, and Belief

ime, Hi

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us,, the hithe hill Thus, of] Hui Vvony apalapan y uixachte ' bo el re cons d to be €o the in Y in

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. ; i eremony m h | ; that the Cc Id

to the Aztecs, it seems highly unlikely y have c es

| ; a site that ) and that f , . ; . to of acl Aztec,k e n Cc 2a 78 Vv ough the re :

; Sa S3. :ent |re 1e€S of| th 3 e1centra ceremon , . Moreo a CW Ww

the ontrol— n fact was the territor y e€ O a

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e

a In por tions of the soutnern akes ha an Azt a S

| S er

e time ofby h th the I - ire y, the and/or tributaries aica Stl city-sta Ww rect line of C Su use cata1d - 1xacnte and hostile IngSthe were lin epend } render atic l

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Why the Aztecs Manipulated Time 93

The festival section of the Codex Borbonicus is a set of monthly celebrations, but it also has year glyphs at the top of three pages— 1 Tochtli on folio 23 with the first Izcalli, 2 Acatl on folio 34 with Pan-

quetzaliztli, and 3 Tecpatl on folio 37 with the second Izcalli feast. These year glyphs constitute the first three years of the last section of the codex, the calendrical sequence. Thus, the first Izcalli bears the 1 Tochtli glyph to show that it is the last month of that year, followed by Atl Cahualo, the first month of the next year, which should logically be 2 Acatl, and which is confirmed subsequently by that glyph’s presence later in the monthly sequence, in Panquetzaliztli. The months follow sequentially until the last, Izcalli, which should conclude the xihuitl year. That folio, 37, also bears the 3 Tecpatl glyph, which would mean that the annual monthly cycle has concluded and this is the last month of the next year, which would deviate from all other listings of the monthly cycle or, as I believe, the year glyph is placed there to emphasize the new Atl Cahualo initial year system and as a conceptual lead-in to the rest of the year count that begins immediately thereafter.52 Since the initial month of the year was shifted in the Aztec calendar from Tlacaxipehualiztli to Atl Cahualo (making Izcalli the last month, rather than Atl Cahualo}, and since it was important, for reasons discussed below, that the month of Panquetzaliztli be marked with the year glyph 2 Acatl, the only way to indicate that Izcalli was unambiguously the last month of the year was to include one at both the start and at the end, each marked with its own year glyph.*? The final folios then continue the year count through 2 Acatl, which also has a New Fire ceremony glyph. But the inclusion of year glyphs on the

three ceremonies of the monthly cycle, and the continuation of those year glyphs in an uninterrupted sequence until the next New Fire ceremony, demonstrates that the monthly festivals presented in this codex, unlike all the other examples, are not generic festivals, but historically specific ones. As the Codex Telleriano-Remensis records, the New Fire ceremony

was moved from 1 Tochtli to 2 Acatl, which I argue occurred after the 1454 ceremony. Because such a ceremony is the culmination of 52 years, it cannot simply be switched at will. Although 1507 was probably the first formally shifted ceremony celebration, it necessarily depended on a buildup of year counts for the previous 52 years, because a New Fire ceremony links the past 52-year cycle to the next and therefore requires a full count before its celebration. Thus, although no New

Fire commemoration may have been held at that time (1455), the 52-

94, Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico

year count would necessarily have begun then. Moreover, the 1506-07 New Fire ceremony would also be a double Calendar Round, in which the Venus cycle would also correlate, so it may have been a more propitious time to shift the ceremony than 1454-55.54In any case, it is this shifting of the New Fire ceremony from a 1 Tochtli to a 2 Acatl date plus the 52-year buildup that is recorded in the Codex Borbonicus. Atfter all, the 52-year Calendar Round was already chronicled on folios 21 and 22, so the year count on folios 37—40 need not be included for that purpose. And though it is laid out like the years in a historical chroni-

cle, it notes only the New Fire ceremony in 1507. If the codex were simply a generic record of how the calendar worked, no year dates would have been needed on the monthly festivals, and there would have been no reason to stop the annual year count that ends the codex at 2 Acatl. After all, the codex was most likely written shortly after the Conquest, so the year count should have continued for an additional fourteen years at a minimum. But it does not. It stops on the New Fire year of 2 Acatl, which is 1507. Moreover, by counting back from that year in which the New Fire ceremony was celebrated, it is evident that the monthly festival cycle begins with Izcalli in 1454 (1 Tochtli}, the earliest Calendar Round beginning when the hill of Huixachtecatl was under Aztec control, so that Panquetzaliztli falls in 1455 (2 Acatl). That is the year the new count would have to begin, yet by depicting the first Izcalli with a year glyph to point out its new year-ending position and to show the absence of a New Fire ceremony at the end of that year, the

codex demonstrates that the 2 Acatl shift had not yet occurred. The reason for that, I suggest, is that the formal New Fire ceremony was held in 1454 (1 Tochtli}. And because the Great Temple underwent a major expansion in 1454,° suggesting that it would have been the site of the New Fire ceremony at that time, it was celebrated that year, 1 Tochtli. Moreover, a February 1, 1454 New Fire ceremony was feasible in relation to the moon, which was only a sliver, had already set at 8:05 P.M., and would thus not obscure the zenith. In contrast, on February 1, 1455, the moon was full (.9747°} and reached its zenith at 10:31 P.M., so the midnight zenith of any constellation would not have been visible, making a New Fire ceremony at that time problematic. But if the New Fire ceremony was celebrated in 1454 rather than 1455, why does the 1 Tochtli year date on the first monthly festival not have an attached New Fire glyph? The answer is that no New Fire glyph was attached because the 1 Tochtli date was not intended to signify an entire year. Rather, it was associated with Izcalli and meant to date that

Why the Aztecs Manipulated Time 95

last month of the year. The New Fire ceremony had already been held earlier in the year at the beginning of the month of Atl Cahualo, so the date on Izcalli is intended both to indicate only the last month of the previous year and to initiate the following year, which is the focus of the codex. And the fact that the year date in Panquetzaliztli does not have an attached New Fire glyph indicates the absence of a formal cere-

mony. But that month and year are nevertheless important because that is when the New Fire recapitulation ceremony began to be held in Panquetzaliztli so that the full count could be completed for the formal shift of the ceremony from 1 Tochtli, as it had been in 1454, to 2 Acatl, and as it would be in 1507. This reading accounts for the ceremony in Panquetzaliztli as a normal monthly festival rather than an anomalous 52-year festival, brings the Codex Borbonicus in line with the other depictions of the monthly festivals, and explains the continuation of the next full 52-year cycle on the final folios and its ending with the 1507 New Fire ceremony. Moreover, if the New Fire ceremony were actually celebrated in Panquetzaliztli, and if it were sufficiently important that that month depicted a once-every-52-years ceremony rather than its monthly festival, it seems anomalous that the distant province of Xoconochco would have been compelled to bring its tribute in Tlacaxipehualiztli and Ochpaniztli, yet be excused in Etzalcualiztli and Panquetzaliztli. There is further evidence in the Codex Borbonicus that would support this interpretation when the manuscript is read from this perspective. For instance, the first year of the 52-year cycle (fol. 21} is paired with Mictlan-Teuctli, the fifth Lord of the Night. As the initial date of

the count of the Calendar Round (though not of the new functional Calendar Round, which was thereafter altered to begin on 2 Acatl), all cycles—g, 13, and 20 day, months, and years—should start at the beginning of their respective series. Yet the Lord of the Night paired with the first year, 1 Tochtli, is not the first of its series. There is no satisfactory explanation of this if the Lords of the Night cycle began on the first day of the new Calendar Round. But it cannot have done so and produced this result. What can account for it, however, is if the Lords of the Night cycle ran without regard to the days inserted to correct for the accumulated leap year errors, though with the last (or first) Lord of the Night doubled. Then the fifth Lord of the Night would be the initial one for the year, 1 Tochtli, after 13 intercalary days had been added ({i.e.,

9 Lords of the Night would have been counted plus 4 more for the 13 additional days, pairing the first day of the first year of the new Calen-

96 Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico

dar Round with the fifth Lord of the Night). Despite the pains taken to have all the tonalpohualli cycles end simultaneously, the Lords of the Night cycle is the likeliest to be used in this fashion since only it is not also tied to the xihuitl cycle and would thus be free to continue running at its completion. The depiction of Lords of the Night accompanying xihuitl years is very unusual, but is necessary to indicate an entire tre-

cena shift that would otherwise be invisible in the Lords of the Day cycle, since these always begin with the same number and lord. Moreover, the first Lord of the Night of the intercalary-day spans—and who would therefore dominate the series—would be Xiuhteuctli, providing some corroboration of Serna’s claim that the added days were dedicated to this god. In any case, though still imperfectly understood, the Codex Borbonicus is not simply a normative description of the Aztec calendar, but also an explanation of the calendrical shift that was crucial to the functioning of the empire. But why would the Aztecs have made a change in the calendar that pushed the New Fire ceremony ahead by an entire year, creating logical difficulties in how the Calendar Rounds were counted, instead of simply moving it a few days or months? The answer, discussed in further detail later, lies in the way annals are recorded (by year], so that if a change were to be made and it needed to be evident in the calendar, an entire year shift was required. But did this occur in 1454-55 or 1506-07, as there is evidence for each? The documentary sources are muddled on this issue, but the expansion of the Great Temple in 1454 supports the thesis that the first 2 Acatl New Fire ceremony was celebrated in 1507, as do two other major archaeological indicators. One is the Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada, which clearly places the New Fire ceremony in 1507 (2 Acatl) and, although earlier commemorative sculptures might have been carved for their respective New Fire ceremonies, none that directly relate the ceremony to a year have been found for the Aztecs, suggesting that this monu-

ment is particularly unusual and important. The second is the construction of a temple atop the hill of Huixachtecatl, ordered for the 1507 New Fire ceremony by King Moteuczoma Xocoyotl.

But is there further evidence for a 1455 shift to set up the 52-year cycle for a completion in 1507, given the 1454 dating of the Templo Mayor expansion? Yes, though not unequivocally so, in two of Chimal-

pahin’s relations. He states that the New Fire ceremony was held in 1455 atop Huixachtecatl.** And since he is silent on the ceremony or its location during the previous Calendar Round cycle, it would appear

Why the Aztecs Manipulated Time 97

that 1455 was its first occurrence there, which accords with other lines of evidence. But how does this fit with 1507 being the first 2 Acatl New Fire ceremony, as commemorated on the Teocalli? In discussions of the 1455 ceremony, Chimalpahin refers only to Huixachtecatl (the hill},

but regarding the 1507 ceremony, he states that it was held at Huixachtlan (the temple} on Huixachtecatl (the hill).57 Whatever took place on Huixachtecatl in 1455, there appears not to have been a New Fire temple there, and so, if there was a ceremony held there that year, it was a more rudimentary one, perhaps of the sort I suggest, to follow the formal one commemorated at the Templo Mayor in 1454, in an effort to reinitiate the altered Calendar Round count in 1455. What effect did the Aztec shift of the New Fire ceremony have on such ceremonies elsewhere? Every city would have marked the passage from one Calendar Round to the next, but a New Fire ceremony does not appear to have been a necessary or integral part of that, and none of the cities of the Valley of Mexico other than Tenochtitlan ** celebrated it because, while the ceremonies were couched in calendrical terms, they were primarily political events. Their major purpose was to assert temporal control and subordinate all of the towns sharing that system. As a result, towns within the Aztec empire did not conduct their own New Fire ceremonies but instead participated in Tenochtitlan’s, which set their calendrical cycle. The area covered by the Aztec calendar was extensive, and relays of runners carried the new fire to distant towns.°° Smaller independent towns with few vassal communities had no need to hold New Fire ceremonies; only other complex polities with subject towns requiring calendrical coordination were apt to have these, as was the case in Tlaxcallan, which held its own New Fire ceremony.*! This marked it and its subordinates as independent by creating a similar zone of temporal coordination, but with a different initiating point from that of the Aztec empire. The same may have been true of Tetzcoco® and Chalco in 1454, before the former lost its parity with Tenochtitlan (and under whose New Fire ceremony it fell in 1507} and when the latter was still unconquered.® In the Aztec world, this ceremony was also a celebration of Huitzilopochtli, yet, if this enormous ritual and political emphasis was placed on that god alone by the Aztecs, why was parity given to Tlaloc in the Great Temple? A symbolic interpretation of ritual structures does have benefits. For instance, one can look at a medieval French cathedral and recognize the symbolism of the west-facing front, with the altar in the east, reflective of the resurrection.“ And such ritual significance may

98 Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico

well be why certain architectural forms and orientations are selected and may usefully inform one about the nature of the symbolic relationships of forms and orientations. However, unfettered by the world, such interpretations often ignore inconsistent data, arguing that the symbolism is structural rather than empirical, and they do little to explain how those notions became important in the first place or why the cathedral was built when and where it was. The same is true of the Great Temple. An alternative approach to the dual pyramid structure may be sought

in its history. When the Aztecs arrived in the Valley of Mexico, they were an unimportant, relatively backward group. Moreover, their tutelary god, Huitzilopochtli, was unimportant and not worshiped or even recognized by any other group in the region. While each town, and even each calpolli, had its own god who might not be worshiped by any other town in the area, I suggest that linking Huitzilopochtli to Tlaloc was a conscious attempt on the part of the Aztecs to tie their provincial god to the most widely venerated deity in Mesoamerica. Thus, the creation of the twin pyramid was a political move designed to speed the acceptance of the Aztecs and their tutelary god by tying him to a widely accepted deity. And while it is tricky to appeal to later evidence to sup-

port earlier actions, the tributary offerings found in the caches of the Great Temple suggest that distant tributaries gave their offerings overwhelmingly to Tlaloc. It has been argued that the paucity of Huitzilopochtli’s offerings reflects the fact that they were composed of perish-

able matter, like the images of the god himself, but there is little evidence to support this notion, and I believe that the more plausible explanation is that dedications in the caches were brought into Tenochtitlan by tributary groups and, to these, Tlaloc was either the only god of the two, or decidedly the more important, and their offerings reflect that. But at the same time, the greater emphasis on Huitzilopochtli reflected in the construction of the pyramid, which the Aztecs controlled, contrasts markedly with the pattern of offerings, which reflects non-Aztec orientations. I believe the Aztecs placed Huitzilopochtli on Tlaloc’s level in the Great Temple to hitch their tribal god to a pan-Mesoamerican god in an effort to increase the importance of their own—but how might such an interpretation be confirmed? One interpretation that focuses on the Great Temple expansion, in-

augurated in 1487, claims that it had 13 vertical levels because it was constructed in four stepped platforms; since the pyramid base was square, that meant that the three lowest parts each had four faces (3 X 4

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