Word: tlaloc
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...curse of human sacrifice. That ritual, in which a priest bent over the recumbent victim and cut out his throbbing heart with an obsidian knife, was central to the Aztecs' religion. The war god Huitzilopochtli required blood as the price of Aztec victory and the rain god Tlaloc required it as the price of the harvest; if these gods remained unpropitiated, the world would end. Exactly how many victims were thus sacrificed (and later eaten) remains uncertain, but it is believed that 20,000 prisoners were offered up on the altar of the Great Temple when it was officially...
...corner of the world. In the center of this cosmos was a complex of temples, the heart and soul of Aztec life. The largest, some 15 stories high, as tall as many European cathedrals, was a stepped pyramid topped by two shrines-one dedicated to the rain god Tlaloc, the other to Huitzilopochtli. This Great Temple, or El Templo Mayor, as the Spaniards called it, was the site of human sacrifice. Victims ascended the stairs, priests tore out then" hearts and the eviscerated bodies were tossed back down. As part of the rite, the Aztecs consumed some of the flesh...
...archaeologists have sliced into seven major levels, plus several minor ones. The best-preserved is the second, completed in 1390, a date derived from a plaque inscribed with carvings from the 52-year Aztec calendar. Even the bases of the shrines to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc remain intact, including a strikingly modern motif of parallel lines that may represent rain. By contrast, the large Coyolxauhqui stone was made about a century later, during the reign of Moctezuma I, grandfather of Cortés' victim...
Mexico is itself a living museum. From 5,000 years ago until the Spanish conquest, its civilizations recognized their gods in the volcanoes and valleys that made their world a temple. To bring the gods closer, the Aztecs carved idols such as the rain god Tlaloc, whose 168-ton bulk now looms outside Mexico City's new National Museum of Anthropology (see color pages). The building itself reflects the autochthonous architecture of Mexico's landscape; it, too, is a living temple...
...skillfully woven into the museum by its architect, Pedro Ramírez Váquez, 46, a team of 40 specialists, and hundreds of artists in wood and stone. Galleries surround an airy grand patio, roofed by an aluminum umbrella that keeps visitors dry in the season when Tlaloc works overtime. Like an upside-down fountain, a sun-stippled waterfall splashes freely onto the patio floor through the umbrella's center, veiling its only support, a bronze-covered column faced with modern interpretations of the rigid stylizations of pre-Hispanic imagery. Fire spurts from an abstract sculpture and reflects...