On view
Xipe Totec (The Flayed One),
1325–1521
When sickness befell one of us men, he made a vow to him, he pledged him that he would put on the skin [of the god]: he would don it when the feast day called Tlacaxipehualitztli was celebrated. All hastened. They pursued one. Many appeared. All went wearing the skin, dripping grease, dripping [blood], glistening, thus terrifying those whom they followed. They fought, joining in battle against the valiant warriors, the chosen ones, the selected, and all who were taking their pleasure, those who became besotted, the buffoons, those who imitated, who pretended to be warriors—the unafraid of death, the jostlers, the perverted warriors. There they exercised their weapons, they skirmished like fighters in war. They ceased [at a place] called Totecco.
A Mexica contributor to Bernadino de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex, book 1, folio 16r, original Nahuatl translated by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson
Information
1325–1521
North America, Mexico, Central Mexico
By 1968, Gillett G. Griffin (1928-2016), Princeton, NJ [1]; 2007, gift of Gillett G. Griffin to the Princeton University Art Museum.
Notes:
[1] This object was loaned to the museum in 1968 (L.1968.178).
- Arne Eggebrecht, Glanz und Untergang des Alten Mexiko: Die Azteken und ihre Vorläufer (Mainz: Verlag Phillip von Zabern, 1986).
- Mereth Sundby, "Hovedpyramiden: Udgravningen ved Zocalo i Mexicos hovestad", Louisiana revy 29, no.1 (1987)., p. 31 (illus.); cat. no. 196, p. 77
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"Acquisitions of the Princeton University Art Museum 2007," in "More than one: photographs in sequence," special issue, Record of the Princeton University Art Museum 67 (2008): p. 96-119.
, pp. 111–112 (illus.)
