[Aztlan] Is there an Aztec Lupercal?

[Diehl, Richard]

Hola Listeros,

Italian archaeologists made international news with yesterday's announcement that they located the Roman Lupercal. This artificial cave, decorated with lavish mosaics and an image of the Roman imperial eagle, was commissioned by Augustus Caesar, Rome's first official emperor, as part of his palace. This sanctuary, constructed some 700-800 years after the mythical events surrounding Rome's founding, represents the cave where the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus, the mythical founder-twins of Rome. Apparently Augustus fostered the belief that he was a descendent of the twins and was "re-founding" the city in some great cycle of time.  We can never know whether Augustus and his contemporaries really accepted the R and R story as myth or history but the Lupercal certainly suggests they appreciated its value as a validating origin story (see Mary Beard's November 20 blog in the on-line London Times for the opinion of an expert).

Now, just what does this have to do with Mesoamerica and the Aztecs? Well no, I am not suggesting that sea-faring Romans crossed the Atlantic and planted alien ideas in the head of clue-less Indians on the coast of Veracruz. However Mesoamericans had their own well-developed beliefs about the importance of caves in their history and religion. This leads me to ponder the possibility that certain Aztec emperors created artificial caves as replicas of their equally mythical Chicomostóc, birth-cave of their ancestors, as places of worship. Perhaps not, but if they did, the archaeologist in me naturally asks where they might be. In the Tenochtitlán palace complexes? At Teotihuacan? At Tula, where legend has it that the most sacred of Aztec relics were buried immediately after the Spanish sacking of Tenochtitlan? In some secluded natural cave on an inaccessible mountain top overlooking the Basin of Mexico? 

We may never know but probing re-readings of the 16th century Native and Spanish accounts, along with some good old foot archaeology, might shed some light on the topic. Any thoughts? 

Saludos,
Dick Diehl