The TLaTOani in TenochTiTlan • 69us the watery serpent, contained on the narrowest sides,
the proper behavior of the canalized water.
The physical relationship of this work to the 1499 aque-
duct has been somewhat obscured by its vagrant history.
When the historian César Lizardi Ramos became aware of
its existence, it was in the northeast corner of the Botanical
Garden of Chapultepec, where it had been since at least
1933, according to one of his informants. But this was not
its original site, because when it was originally identified
as a Mexica work, in 1924, it was being used as the lintel of
the city’s slaughterhouse, which sat on the Plaza San Lucas,
a site adjacent to the ancient aqueduct from Acuecuexco
(see figure 1.10). 66 A long rectangular prism, it was origi-
nally the shape and size appropriate for an architectural
element. Its iconography makes it clear that it was set hori-
zontally, rather than as an upright post. Since places like
Chapultepec reveal that there were ceremonial buildings
adjacent to aqueducts, this work could have been set as a
ceremonial lintel or at the frieze level or perhaps served as
a cornice of the structure built to contain the water coming
off the aqueduct. 67
The placement of this elaborately worked sculpture,
probably set at or near the aqueduct, commemorates the
acts of auto sacrifice that Mexica tlatoani engaged in at such
moments of building consecration; by costuming them-
selves as the teixiptla of a deity, they were transformed into
this being and as her, had some control over her behavior.
The serpent on the top of the monument, its body marked
with jade, whose color and transparency were associated
with water, evokes the water in the aqueduct itself. The
verdant feathers that adorn the serpent on its side signify
the new growth of green maize shoots. The active ruler,
who is either adjacent to or dominant next to the feathered
serpent, controls these unruly natural forces through his
own action of self-sacrifice. Thus, the sculpture does not
present us with the portrait of Ahuitzotl, but makes clear
that we are witnessing Ahuitzotl-as-Chalchiuhtlicue. The
evanescent performance of the teixiptla becomes perma-
nent, as if to guarantee that the effects of ritual action set
into a particular space will endure as long as the stone itself.
Despite the anticipatory representation of the water
serpents on the Acuecuexatl stone, Ahuitzotl’s engineers
failed to foresee the quantity of the flow of water, or its
effects. So much water came through the aqueduct, Durán
reports, that after forty days the laguna that captured the
aqueduct’s overflow was swollen, and the city began to
flood with the freshwater welling up from the surrounding
laguna. Ahuitzotl, in desperation, had the strong mortar
dams that had been so carefully built around the spring
destroyed and allowed the water to flow back into its nor-
mal course. To stop the backwash, he had a long dike built
along the eastern littoral of the city, linking the causeways
of Tepeyacac and Ixtapalapa, the final link of the inner dike
to protect the city, but to no avail (see figure 2.7). “The more
they tried to stop the water, the more damage it caused.”
The surging Chalchiuhtlicue refused to be restrained. 68
In response, Ahuitzotl sent sculptors to the city of Tula,
a sacred city in the Valley of Mexico, to carve a shallow
relief on a rock face overlooking the site, showing Quet-
zalcoatl—or Ahuitzotl costumed as this deity supplicating
himself in front of the deity Chalchiuhtlicue—requesting
to have the overabundant waters cease. 69 Carving deity
images into semimodulated surfaces of live rock on hills
has other parallels in the valley, and in all cases, the pres-
ence of these sculptures, both in the iconography and in
the ritual action they registered, imbued each place with
new meanings. Understanding the Mexica ideas of teotl
and teixiptla and the particular agency that they possessed
allows us to better understand how the Mexica themselves
understood these transfers of meaning to happen between
the different spheres of space.fReshwaTeR and moTeuczoma
Ahuitzotl’s reign was tarnished by his failure to win the
battle with water; he died in 1502, shortly after the fiasco of
the aqueduct. His successor, his nephew Moteuczoma II,
had thus witnessed firsthand his uncle’s humiliating battle
with the forces of freshwater. In one of the early monu-
ments of Moteuczoma’s reign, the Teocalli of Sacred War-
fare, there is no supplication to the powerful water deity.
Instead, another visual strategy was employed in com-
memorating Chalchiuhtlicue’s defeat in the iconography
on its back (see figures 2.14 and 2.15). Again, its placement
would have been important, in both taking meaning from
and lending meaning to its spatial context. The throne was
discovered at the end of July 1926 in the southwest corner
of the Palacio Nacional, under a small projecting spur of
the south tower, quite close to two other major monuments
unearthed in 1790 in the adjacent southeast corner of the
Plaza Mayor, the Calendar Stone and the massive sculp-
ture of Coatlicue. Since the Palacio Nacional was built
on the foundations of the palace of Moteuczoma and the
throne shows very little surface damage through dragging