30 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy
the monumental architecture. But for the Mexica, the cur-
rent may have run the other way as well, with lived spaces
determining cosmic ones. Twin-templed at its top, the
Templo Mayor’s right (or southern) side was dedicated
to the deity Huitzilopochtli, and its left (or northern) side
was dedicated to Tlaloc. Archeologists have shown that
its earliest architects (of Phase II) carefully aligned the
building to the east, so the cleft between the two buildings
seemed to precisely channel the rising sun into the sky on
the important days of the equinoxes. Successive rebuild-
ings (Phases III and IV), which increased the height of
the building, threw off the solar alignment. So important
was the relationship between the building and the move-
ment of the sun that beginning in Phase V, successive
generations of Mexica architects reoriented the building
with every rebuilding, carefully skewing the axis of the
building to preserve the relationship, even at the cost of
a somewhat irregular trapezoidal footprint. 15 Thus, upon
the autumnal equinox in late September, at the beginning
of the dry season, a season associated with Huitzilopochtli
because it was the season to wage war, the sun rose between
the cleft in the two shrines at the top of the pyramid. It
then moved south along the horizon with every successive
sunrise on its gradual voyage to the terminal point along
the horizon, falling on the winter solstice. It then journeyed
back along the horizon again, and every sunrise until the
spring equinox continued to appear behind Huitzilo-
pochtli’s side of the temple. In contrast, in the wetter and
darker summer months, the sun rose behind the side of
the temple dedicated to Tlaloc, the rain and agricultural
deity. Considered from the perspective of the earth-bound
observer, this building had agency—that is, lived spaces
determined cosmic ones. The slipping of the sun along the
horizon provoked anxiety; should the sun continue moving
on its southbound course after December 22, appearing
for a shorter and shorter period day by day, until it would
not appear at all, the world would end. But this cosmic
collapse was prevented (or at least forestalled) by the
double-templed building, which made the sun rise through
its cleft twice yearly, or so it appears from the ground. In
doing so, the building actualized a cosmic model where
solar darkness (conceived of as the cloudy rainy season)
battled against solar brightness (the sunny dry season);
by serving as a permanent horizon marker, the building
brought this contest into clear visibility. And every time the
sun moved back to its expected position of rising from the
cleft at the equinoxes, the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan
confirmed its capacity to make things happen, exerting its
force on the solar orb like the slow and inexorable pull of
a gravitational field.The seaRch foR The ideaL aLTePeTL
If one key nexus of Mexica spatial thought was the victory
of the rising sun, Huitzilopochtli, over his cast-down (and
often female) enemies, another was the altepetl, which was
both an ideal physical and an ideal political space. The
search for the ideal altepetl also dominates Mexica histori-
cal narratives. As pictured in the Tira de la Peregrinación,
the Mexica endured years of wandering around the lake,
shown by the year count embedded in the squares on the
page. But in the year 1279, or 8 Reed, they arrived at a hill
called Chapultepec, which lay on the Laguna of Mexico, the
swampy western edge of the salty Lake Tetzcoco (figuresfiguRe 2.3. Unknown creator, birth of Huitzilopochtli at Coatepec,
Florentine Codex, bk. 3, ch. 1, fol. 3v, ca. 1575–1577. Florence, Biblioteca
Medicea Laurenziana, Med. Palat. 218, c. 204v. By concession of the
Ministry for Heritage and Cultural Activities; further reproduction by
any means is forbidden.