Ritual Sacrifice: Scenes in Aztec Pottery

Aztec pottery often depicts scenes of blood sacrifices.  For the Aztecs, providing human blood in sacrifice ceremonies was a religious duty, necessary to sustain the world by maintaining the fertility of the land and the power of the ruler.  It was also vital for satisfying the gods, who might at any moment, determine to bring the present age to a violent end.  Humans, gods and the natural world were part of a cosmic pattern of energy in which ritual and sacrifice were the means by which energy was recycled or passed on.  Among the Aztecs, the two most common forms of sacrifice were extracting the victim’s heart and burning to death.

Aztec sacrifice

The extraction of the heart was performed with great ceremony on a special sacrificial block known as a quauhxicalli (Stone of the Eagle).  The stone was pointed in the center, so that a victim thrown down on it would be forced to arch his back and so thrust up his chest ready for the sacrificial knife.

Naked victims were grouped at the foot of the temple as a priest descended from the heights of the temple with an image of the god in whose honor the sacrifice was being made.  He showed the image of the deity to each victim chanting, “this is your god”, before the victims were led up to the sacrificial stone.

human sacrifice ritual

Six priests often wearing Aztec masks portraying deities performed each sacrifice: four to hold each limb, one to hold the victim’s throat and one to cut open the chest.  The lead priest garmented in a splendid red tunic and a helmet with yellow and green feathers sliced the victim’s chest with an obsidian knife called a tecpatl.  The heart was then torn out of the chest often still beating, held up to the sun and cast still steaming before the image of the god.

Sacrifice by burning was reserved for ceremonies in honor of the fire god Xiuhtecuhtli, who was sometimes also worshipped as Huehueteotl (The Old God).  The rite represented the rebirth of the god, the rising of the new life from death in the same way as the sun is reborn each day.