Cē Acatl Tōpīltzin Quetzalcōātl

Cē Acatl Tōpīltzin Quetzalcōātl , mostly just Quetzalcoatl , (* 843 ; † 883 or 895 ) was a priest-king of the Toltecs , who had adopted the name of the god Quetzalcoatl (= "feather snake"). Its full name means something like "1 pipe, our dear prince, shining tail feather snake". The dates of his life have been passed down contradictingly. According to the reports from the colonial era, which have been transformed into legends , he ruled in Tollan , where he is said to have introduced the arts and sciences, especially writing and the calendar. The Aztecs derived their rulers over the kings of Colhuacán from him.

history

According to more recent studies, his life story, as far as it can be reconstructed from the sources, is as follows: He was born in 843 and was king in Tollan from 873. Its end is not clearly communicated: either he died in the year 883 or he left the city with his followers in 895 and reached the coast of the Gulf of Mexico after a long hike . There he is said to have either burned himself and ascended to the morning star or to have gone over the sea on a raft formed by snakes to the land of Tlillan Tlapallan ("land of blackness and redness"). This land is equated by many researchers with the area of the northern Maya culture ( Chichén Itzá ).

His rule is portrayed (from the point of view of the Christian Indian authors of the colonial period) as peaceful and wise, averse to cruel sacrificial practices , and he himself resembles a hermit . Accordingly, his end is also seen as a result of breaking his self-imposed rules, to which he was seduced by hostile deities ( Tezcatlipoca ). He moved away out of shame.

In Tollan he was followed by the reconstruction based on reports as ruler Matlacxochitl and three other unknown rulers, until Huemac (son of the ruler Totepeuh of Colhuacan ) the dynasty came to an end under terrible omens.

Maya

The Maya in the north of Yucatán worshiped a deity named Kukulkan , whose name is synonymous with "Quetzalcoatl". According to Diego de Landa's report, a leader of this name is said to have come to the Itzá from the west , founded the city of Mayapán , ruled there and then returned to central Mexico, where he is equated with the historic Quetzalcoatl. Kukulkan plays an important role in the historical reconstruction of a Toltec immigration in the Yucatán by various modern authors.

Colonial transformation

In colonial texts, especially by Franciscan authors, it is claimed that Moctezuma initially mistook the Spaniards and their leader Hernán Cortés for the returning Quetzalcoatl. So (according to the texts recorded by Sahagún in Nahuatl , which could not have come from eyewitnesses) the embassy sent to Cortés to the Spaniards who had just landed made all Indian signs of devotion to Cortés, worshiped him and said to him: "Let the god hear, he is greeted by his vassal Motecuzoma, who rules the city of Mexico ”. They would have laid out four different divine costumes in front of him to determine which one he would wear in order to identify himself. Cortés opted for the Quetzalcoatl costume. Cortés reported to the Spanish king that Moctezuma had only referred to himself as the governor of a (unnamed) former ruler whose return he had expected and who would now have entered with Cortés, which is why he placed his rule in his hands. With such an act, Cortés would have become an indispensable mediator for the king in taking over power, something which Cortés must have had great interest in after the previous disobedience.

The story of the Aztec expectation of the return of the Quetzalcoatl became more and more developed the later a text was written after the Conquista . This idea was met by the fact that the year 1519 in the Aztec counting of the year was a year 1 acatl , i.e. corresponding to the name of Quetzalcoatl, whereby names from calendar dates generally correspond to a day and not a year (which cannot be formally distinguished from them).

Nigel Davies summed up the generally accepted professional opinion : "It is now beyond doubt that the story of a bearded, white-skinned Quetzalcoatl is entirely a colonial invention". This reinterpretation of the history of the Spanish conquest is not the only one.

literature

Günter Lanczkowski : The religions of the Aztecs, Maya and Inca. Knowledge Buchges., Darmstadt 1989, ISBN 3-534-03222-5 .

Web links

Quetzalcoatl - Info

Individual evidence

^ Hanns J. Prem : Los reyes de Tollan y Colhuacan . In: Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl Vol. 30 (1999) pp. 23-70.
↑ Werner Stenzel: Origen y elementos del mito del regreso de Dios blanco Quetzalcoatl . In Marten E. Jansen, Ted J. Leyenaar (Ed.): International Colloquium: The Indians of México in pre-Columbian and modern times . Leiden 1982. pp. 170-175.
^ Nigel Davies : The Aztecs, a history . London 1973. p. 258.
↑ Matthew Restall: Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest . Oxford, Oxford University Press 2003. ISBN 0-19-516077-0 .

personal data
SURNAME	Cē Acatl Tōpīltzin Quetzalcōātl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Quetzalcoatl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Toltec priest, inventor of the calendar and writing
DATE OF BIRTH	843
PLACE OF BIRTH	Tollan
DATE OF DEATH	883 or 895

[1] Hanns J. Prem : Los reyes de Tollan y Colhuacan . In: Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl Vol. 30 (1999) pp. 23-70.

[2] Werner Stenzel: Origen y elementos del mito del regreso de Dios blanco Quetzalcoatl . In Marten E. Jansen, Ted J. Leyenaar (Ed.): International Colloquium: The Indians of México in pre-Columbian and modern times . Leiden 1982. pp. 170-175.

[3] Nigel Davies : The Aztecs, a history . London 1973. p. 258.

[4] Matthew Restall: Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest . Oxford, Oxford University Press 2003. ISBN 0-19-516077-0 .