Veintenas
Atlcahualo
Veintenas
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Origin 1200 to 1521
The first of the eighteen twenty day veintenas of the xiuhpohualli, the Aztec solar year of 365 days. Sahagun's informants describe offerings made to the Tlaloque and to Chalchiuhtlicue to secure rain for the planting season ahead, including child sacrifices at mountain shrines and at the lake, whose tears were held to be an omen of the coming rains.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodLate Postclassic Period, the Aztec Triple Alliance, kept in living informant memory through Sahagun's mid sixteenth century interviews. 1 Place of OriginCentral Mexico, the Basin of Mexico and the wider Nahuatl speaking highlands under the Aztec Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan. 1 Origin of the NameThe Nahuatl name recorded here, Atlcahualo, follows the spelling given by Sahagun's informants and set down in the Florentine Codex by Spanish trained scribes; other colonial sources and modern transliterations spell it differently. 2 Disputed
Approximate Gregorian SpanEarly to late February, in this reconstruction 1 Scholars have proposed several correlations between the xiuhpohualli year and the Gregorian calendar. The month range given here follows one widely reproduced reconstruction and is offered for relative placement only, not as a settled date: the 365 day count carried no intercalated leap day, so its alignment with the solar year is understood to have drifted across the centuries of its use, and colonial era testimony was recorded decades after the practice had ended. Attributions
Ruling DeityTlaloc and the Tlaloque; Chalchiuhtlicue 2 Observance
Principal FestivalChild sacrifice at mountain shrines and at the lake, to secure the coming rains 2 Meaning
Literal Meaning Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryA standard analytic category in the study of religion 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Under Patronage Of
Atlcahualo's ruling deity is recorded as Tlaloc and the Tlaloque together with Chalchiuhtlicue.
Atlcahualo's ruling deity is recorded as Tlaloc and the Tlaloque together with Chalchiuhtlicue.
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