[Aztlan] tepantitla murals

[Matthew H. Robb]

Nandi, 

The initial identification of the 'Paradise of Tlaloc' section was made by Alfonso Caso in the 1942 and has been hanging around ever since, but I think few scholars would now identify the Tepantitla as the 'Tlalocan' as Caso saw it. Esther Pasztory studied the murals extensively in her 1971 dissertation and isolated the different ritual scenes - the ballgame, curing, sacrifice, etc. More recently, Maria Teresa Uriarte has argued that the ballgame depictions in the talud murals suggest that they represent a Teotihuacan version of a pan-Mesoamerican creation myth, and Katherine Browder has looked very closely at the glyph-like aspects of the paintings and interpreted Tepantitla as a Teotihuacan "House of Song."

Matthew Robb


Caso, Alfonso
1942    El paraiso terrenal en Teotihuacan. Cuadernos Americanos 1(6):127-136.

Pasztory, Esther
1971    The Murals of Tepantitla, Teotihuacan. Garland Publishing, New York, NY, and London, UK.

Browder, Jennifer
2005    Place of the High Painted Walls: The Tepantitla Murals and the Teotihuacan Writing System. Ph.D., University of California Riverside.

Uriarte, María Teresa
2006    The Teotihuacan Ballgame and the Beginning of Time. Ancient Mesoamerica 17:17-38.


----- Original Message ----
From: nandi cohen <nandi.cohen at hotmail.com>
To: aztlan at lists.famsi.org
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2007 12:12:56 PM
Subject: [Aztlan] tepantitla murals


I am teaching a Mesoamerican class and showed the Tepantitla mural from Teotihuacan to my class--the one with the great goddess at the top and the paradise of Tlaloc at the bottom.  My students were asking about the significance of the Paradise of Tlaloc section.  I haven't been able to find any information in the literature that speaks to the symbolism in that part of the mural.  any and all suggestions would be a great help.  thanks!

- Nandi Cohen