Dynastic History | Museo del Templo Mayor — Twelve Tonnes of Earth Lord, Face Up Under the Floor

On 2 October 2006, in the seventh season of the Proyecto Templo Mayor, archaeologists working in the Ajaracas property at the corner of Argentina and Guatemala uncovered a slab of pink andesite, 4.17 by 3.62 metres and something like twelve tonnes, carved with Tlaltecuhtli — the earth lord, shown crouching with a flint knife in the mouth. It lay on the floor of the temple's sixth building stage, the one attributed to Ahuítzotl. Leonardo López Luján directed the season. The monolith was lifted to street level in November 2007 and moved into the Museo del Templo Mayor on 17 May 2010, where it lies in a sunken well and visitors look down at it from a rail.

The museum opened on 12 October 1987, eight halls arranged around the two gods of the double temple. One of them is given over to tribute and trade, and it makes the plain point: the offerings sealed under the pyramid are stocked with material the Basin of Mexico does not produce, and the provinces that owed it are listed in the same court records that set the rates. What was buried as a gift to a god had first been taken as tax.

The building sits behind the archaeological zone; the ticket door is on Seminario, a few steps off the Zócalo, and INAH runs both.

📸 Cover: the Tlaltecuhtli monolith in its gallery at the Museo del Templo Mayor, Mike Peel, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons