Overview

The Coyolxauhqui Stone is a circular andesite relief about 3.25 metres across showing the goddess Coyolxauhqui, She of the Bells on Her Cheeks, decapitated and dismembered, her severed limbs and head arranged around her torso. Carved around 1473, it was set at the foot of the stairway on the Huitzilopochtli side of the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan. Its chance rediscovery by electrical workers in February 1978 set off the modern excavation of the Templo Mayor beneath the centre of Mexico City.

The Coyolxauhqui Stone was discovered on 21 February 1978, when electrical utility workers digging in downtown Mexico City struck a massive carved monolith, a find that led directly to the major excavation of the Templo Mayor, the principal temple precinct of the Mexica capital Tenochtitlan, previously known only from colonial-era descriptions rather than from direct archaeological access. The find prompted the Mexican government to expropriate and demolish colonial-era buildings standing on top of the previously inaccessible temple precinct, enabling the systematic excavation of the Templo Mayor that continues in phases today, making the Coyolxauhqui Stone's 1978 discovery a documented turning point in the archaeology of the Aztec capital rather than an isolated find.