Veintenas
Toxcatl
Veintenas
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Origin 1200 to 1521
The fifth veintena, centered on the sacrifice of a young man who had spent the preceding year living as the honored, temple maintained impersonator of Tezcatlipoca, walking the city as the god's living image before his sacrifice atop the temple. Among the most fully documented Mexica rites, described at length by both Sahagun's informants and by Duran.
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, Toxcatl, 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 SpanLate April into mid May 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 Deity Observance
Principal FestivalSacrifice of the year's Tezcatlipoca impersonator 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
Toxcatl's ruling deity is recorded as Tezcatlipoca.
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