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Many gods in the pantheon of deities of the Aztecs were inclined to have a fondness for a particular aspect of warfare. However, Huitzilopochtli was known as the primary god of war in ancient Mexico. [30] Since he was the patron god of the Mexica, he was credited with both the victories and defeats that the Mexica people had on the battlefield.
The Aztecs were conquered by Spain in 1521 after a long siege of the capital, Tenochtitlan, where much of the population died from hunger and smallpox. Cortés, with 508 Spaniards, did not fight alone but with as many as 150,000 or 200,000 allies from Tlaxcala , and eventually other Aztec tributary states.
Cuahuitlicac was Coatlicue's son and Huitzilopochtli's brother. Cuahuitlicac warned the unborn Huitzilopochtli that Coatlicue's other 400 children were planning to kill her to prevent the birth of Huitzilopochtli. Cuahuitlicac is a god of the northern stars as part of the Centzonmimixcoa. Centzonhuitznāhuah, the 400 gods of the southern stars.
Guided by their priest, the Aztec tribe fled. On the road, their god Huitzilopochtli forbade them to call themselves Azteca, telling them that they should be known as Mexica. Scholars of the 19th century—in particular Alexander von Humboldt and William H. Prescott—translated the word Azteca, as is shown in the Aubin Codex, to Aztec. [2] [3]
The Aztecs adopted his cult during the reign of Axayacatl (1469–81). During Tlacaxipehualiztli ("Flaying of Men"), the second ritual month of the Aztec year, the priests killed human victims by removing their hearts. They flayed the bodies and put on the skins, which were dyed yellow and called teocuitlaquemitl ("golden clothes").
However, since Copil was his relative, Huitzilopochtli decided to honor him and made a cactus grow over Copil heart and it became a sacred place. The Aztecs attempted to ally with the Colhua to confront the Tepanec: they were allowed to settle in Tizapán, near Colhuacan. In 1323, the Aztecs slaughtered a Colhua Princess in front of her father.
The architectural style of the Aztecs reflected relationships with a higher power. In Tenochtitlan, the layout of the city represented the birth of Huitzilopochtli, [24] the Aztec god of the sun and war. [25] The teocalli, or pyramid-temples, were significant to Aztec religious practices. They were the sites of religious celebrations and ...
The Aztecs [a] (/ ˈ æ z t ɛ k s / AZ-teks) were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries.