1673 Engraving of a Horned Idol in an Aztec Temple
DESCRIPTION
An engraved scene of a horned idol in an Aztec temple appears in this excerpted leaf from the America's Discoverers chapter of the 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's account of the Americas.
In the center of the scene, a horned idol with the head of a beast stands on a carved altar, two human faces set into its chest and a third on its belly, its arms spread wide above goat-like legs. Jars stand on the step before the altar, and candles burn atop twisted posts on either side beneath hanging lamps, while more flames line the walls of the dark hall. At lower left, a figure in a feathered headdress raises a knife over a victim pinned to the ground. At right, two Europeans in hats look on, one holding out an open hand.
The scene appears to show the great temple of Tenochtitlan (which the text calls Tenustitan) and its chief idol, both described in the text below. The temple is said to have been square, with four great doors opening onto four broad streets, towers that almost reached the clouds, and halls raised high so that the priests might be nearer to heaven. The text claims that the marble image of the idol Vuichilabuchichi (Huitzilopochtli) stood taller than the bronze Colossus of Rhodes, its head reaching the vault of the temple, and that smaller idols beside it were shaped from meal kneaded with herbs and human blood. Victims are described as having blood drawn from near the heart to smear the idols' lips before the heart itself was torn out and burned. While Cortés and Montezuma (Kortesius and Mutekzuma in the text) toured the sanctuary, two Spaniards are said to have slipped into one of the dark cellars along the walls and found burning torches and walls caked two fingers thick with human blood. The reverse tells how a thousand barefoot courtiers came out to meet Cortés with Montezuma himself in the last group, how the king hung a golden collar full of pearls around his neck and seated him on a golden throne in his palace, and how Cortés later took him prisoner. It goes on to describe the city itself, describing its over sixty thousand houses, four stone bridges to the mainland, and great trade in cacao, which the text calls cachaos and says was ground into a pleasant drink and used as money.
Arnoldus Montanus (ca. 1625–1683), a Dutch minister and schoolmaster, compiled De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld from earlier chronicles and travel accounts without ever crossing the Atlantic. The Amsterdam publisher Jacob van Meurs issued it in 1671 with a wealth of engravings. John Ogilby's English adaptation followed the same year, and Die Unbekante Neue Welt, the German edition attributed to Olfert Dapper, followed in 1673. Its illustrations were drawn by artists who had mostly never seen the Americas either. They mix reported detail with European invention, and they shaped how a generation of European readers pictured the New World.
CONDITION
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