The Sacrifice of Tecciztecatl and the Metaphor of the Day in the Festivals of the Mexica Veintenas

Abstract

It is usually assumed that the Mexica year was divided into 18 periods of twenty days (veintenas) plus five unfortunate days (nemontemi), and that one festival related to the agro-meteorological cycle was held in each veintena. However, there is no consensus on the moments of the tropic year to which those festivals alluded: the ‘intercalationist’ perspective assumes that by the sixteenth century, the veintenas were in place, while the ‘systemic’ perspective, led by Michel Graulich, assumes that those had an accumulated mismatch of approximately five Christian months. Unfortunately, debate between both positions has been almost nonexistent, so that adherence to either the one or the other seems to be merely a matter of personal preference. As a way to contribute to the debate, in this work I will use the same methodological resources as Graulich to inquire at which period of the cycle the creation of the Moon was updated, as well as the role played by the incinerate/scorch opposition. As a result, adopting a position closer to the intercalationist, I will show that the function that the sacrifice on the embers fulfilled in the solar cycle seems to contradict the position Graulich attributed to the veintenas in the tropic year.