Tecpatl

This knife expresses multiple meanings that carry a complex view of the world which are closely associated with the notions of origin and human sacrifice.

[2] In the version of the Legend of the Five Suns, Tecpatl becomes temporal marker of the birth of the Centzonmimixcoa, and the name of the mother goddess switches to Iztac Chalchiuhtlicue(She of the Jade Skirt).

Meanwhile, Duran tells his priests" sought a child cot and put into it a flint knife with which they sacrificed the one they called the son of Cihuacoatl."

[2] In Aztec mythology, the tecpatl was sometimes drawn as a simple flint blade, sharpened with some notches on the edge, in the Codex Borgia it appears red.

[5] Tecpatl Year 1 (1168): the Aztec people left their place of origin, Aztlán, to undertake a long and difficult journey through the arid northern lands, part of what is now known as Mexico City.

The tecpatl was used by Aztec priests to open the chest of the victims of human sacrifice to extract the heart that would feed the gods, in the hope that the offerings would bring blessings to mankind.

[6] There were different types of knives, some of them allude to human sacrifice, being carved as a skull silhouette, where the nose was used as the cutting edge of the weapon.

[7] The flint knife, is also represented in the following sections of the Sun Stone: In the accounts written by Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta on the origin of Tecpatl: The Centzonmimixcoa were the first man-gods, "they shall be as gods who created mankind and subsequently be slaughtered at Teotihuacan, some by jumping into fire, the others by opening their chest with a flint knife, this in order that the new Sun has movement and life".

[2] This story is related to two main iconographic elements from Sunstone: one is the Flint Knife (Tecpatl), and the other is the glyph: Four Movement (Nahui Ollin)[2] In the version of the Legend of the Five Suns, as well as the fourhundreth, five more Centzonmimixcoa are born.

[2] In Aztec codices, the myth goes that Tezcatlipoca changed his name to Mixcoatl in the second year after the flood and makes fire from two pieces of flint.

[2] In the codices, the Moon is usually shown on a framework of dark night, as a kind of vessel cross-cut and usually filled with a liquid form.

The vessel appears to be formed by a crooked bone, and inside is almost always the figure of a rabbit, a tecpatl or sometimes a small snail.

[11] A knife found in the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, shows a profile of a face that presumably represents the carrier of the tecpatl year(a minor deity).

[12] The tongue in the form of an obsidian knife (tecpatl) exposed to outside, indicates the need to be fed with the magical substance that was human blood flowing from the heart.

In the Codex Borgia, Mictlantecuhtli (lord of the underworld) appears as an active sacrificer armed with an ax or a técpal, ready to draw the hearts of his victims, his nose and tongue accuse the form of sharp knives.