page_title: Tecpatl
section_title: Mythical origin of Tecpatl
hierarchical_section_title: Tecpatl / Mythical origin of Tecpatl
caption_attribution_description: Illustration of Aztec god, Xipe Totec
context_page_description: In the Aztec culture, a tecpatl was a flint or obsidian knife with a lanceolate figure and double-edged blade, with elongated ends. Both ends could be rounded or pointed, but other designs were made with a blade attached to a handle. It can be represented with the top half red, reminiscent of the color of blood, in representations of human sacrifice and the rest white, indicating the color of the flint blade.
  It was the sign of the eighteenth day, the twentieth day of the month of the Aztec calendar and the beginning of one of the twenty trecenas of the tonalpohualli.
  The Tecpatl knife was traditionally used for human sacrifice by the Aztecs, but it also was the short-range weapon of the jaguar warriors. Although it may have seen only limited use on the battlefield, its sharp edges would have made it an effective sidearm.
context_section_description: Tecpatl, is one of the most complex iconographic symbols of Aztec mythology. This knife expresses multiple meanings that carry a complex view of the world which are closely associated with the notions of origin and human sacrifice.
  The Tecpatl (Flint) was born in the height of heaven shaped as a knife, and was thrown down by his brother, and it was destined to descend from heaven to earth. It falls in Chicomoztoc(The Place of the Seven Caves) primary array of peoples, fragmenting into 1600 pieces, and from those fragments a thousand and six hundred gods emerge,  the first gods here on earth. These gods emerging from the Seven Caves are the Centzonmimixcoa (four snakes clouds). This is confirmed by another version of the myth where the Flint serves as a temporary event marker, appearing as a calendar date, as a carrier of the year Centzonmimixcoa are born: "In year 1 Tecpatl Centzonmimixcoa were born, Iztac Chalchiuhtlicue (She of the Jade Skirt) begat the fourhundreth mixcohua. Then they went into a cave; and upon entering, their mother gave birth to five more Mimixcoa".
  In the version of the Legend of the Five Suns, Tecpatl becomes temporal marker of the birth of the Centzonmimixcoa, and the name of the mother goddess switches to Iztac Chalchiuhtlicue(She of the Jade Skirt).
  According to Bernardino de Sahagún and Diego Durán they present the homology between this myth and ritual. "Among the ornaments worn by the women representing Cihuacoatl at parties, they also brought a crib on their back, so to bring your child in it, and stood in the tianguis among the other women, and disappearing left the crib there . When the other women looked at what was in it, it was a flint and iron were sandeel , with which they killed those whom they sacrificed." Meanwhile,  Duran tells his priests" sought a child cot and put into it a flint knife with which they sacrificed the one they called the son of Cihuacoatl."
  In the version where the Centzonmimixcoa are born from the Tecpatl, the mother's name is Citlalinicue. In the version that is temporary marker Tecpatl birth, the mother is Iztac Chalchiuhtlicue, and in rites the mother of Tecpatl is Cihuacoatl. Three different invocations of the primordial mothers: skirt stars, She of the Jade Skirt, the snake woman who is at once a warrior deity, Tecpatl mother of the fourhundreth Centonmimixcoa born, the first gods on earth, in Chicomoztoc, the womb of the peoples.
caption: Xipe Totec, carrying a bloody tecpatl. (Codex Borgia)
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