48 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy
back, knees drawn up, holding a bowl for sacrificial offer-
ings on its chest. In this case, the chacmool is very much
alive, staring out from behind an elaborate goggle-eyed
face mask of Tlaloc and gripping the offering bowl with
puffy hands. However, the lively chacmool was not always
so. Mary Ellen Miller has traced the origin of the chacmool
form to depictions of sacrificial captives, set at the base
of Maya stelae, and the figure of Chalchiuhtlicue carved
into the back face of the Teocalli of Sacred Warfare can be
understood as returning to this prototype. 67
Thus, the imagery of the back of the Teocalli draws on
long-standing spatial diagrams with cast-down females. It
is like the Templo Mayor, which had a sculpture of the sac-
rificed Coyolxauhqui set at its base. It follows the mythic
template found in the Histoyre du Mechique, where the
female earth deity, Tlaltecuhtli, is sacrificed at the origin
of the world, as male deities fly through and above her
body. And it even more closely adheres to the image of
a sacrificed female deity depicted in the Codex Borgia, a
comparison first suggested by Caso (figure 2.16). In one
scene from this important religious manuscript from cen-
tral Mexico, the female earth deity lies on her back at the
base of the image and is identifiable by her clawed hands
and feet. She wears the mask of Tlaloc, showing her watery
associations. Just like Chalchiuhtlicue on the Teocalli, her
sacrificed body gives rise to a spiny cactus tree arising from
her chest. This is not any tree, but a world tree, holding up
the heavens, like the four depicted in the Codex Fejérváry-
Mayer (figure 2.5). And just like on the Teocalli, an eagle,
that solar bird, sits in its upper branches. 68 The back imagefiguRe 2.16. Unknown creator, world tree with sacrificed deity at base,
detail, Codex Borgia, p. 52, ca. fourteenth to early fifteenth century.
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.