Tzompantli

[2] In 2015 archeologists announced the discovery of the Huey Tzompantli, with more than 650 skulls, in the archeological zone of the Templo Mayor in Mexico City.

That derivation has been ascribed to explain the depictions in several codices that associate these with banners; however, Nahuatl linguist Frances Karttunen has proposed that pantli means merely 'row' or 'wall'.

[11] Human sacrifice on a large scale was introduced to the Maya by the Toltecs from the appearances of the tzompantli in the Chichen Itza ball courts.

According to Bernal Díaz del Castillo's eye-witness account, the Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, written several decades after the event, after Hernán Cortés's expedition was forced to make their initial retreat from Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs erected a makeshift tzompantli to display the severed heads of men and horses they had captured from the invaders.

[13][14] This taunting is also depicted in an Aztec codex which relates the story, and the subsequent battles which led to the eventual capture of the city by the Spanish forces and their allies.

[15] During the stay of Cortes's expedition in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (initially as guest-captives of the Emperor Moctezuma II, before the battle which would lead to the conquest), they reported a wooden tzompantli altar adorned with the skulls from recent sacrifices.

[22] However, based on numbers given by Taipa and Fray Diego Durán, Bernard Ortiz de Montellano[23] has calculated that there were at most 60,000 skulls on the Hueyi Tzompantli of Tenochtitlan.

Atop of the aforementioned platform was erected an equally formidable wooden palisade and scaffolding consisting of between 60 and 70 massive uprights or timbers woven together with an impressive constellation of horizontal cross beams upon which were suspended the tens of thousands of decapitated human heads once impaled thereon.

[26] On the other hand, Rubén G. Mendoza contends that the Hueyi Tzompantli was placed on an east–west axis between the Templo Mayor and a principal ball court.

[27] Modern archeological evidence has found that this large palisade was flanked by two circular towers made out of skulls and mortar.

The Frontispiece of the Codex Mendoza depicts a tzompantli holding single skull next to an eagle perched on a cactus.

[30] Archaeologists affiliated with the National Institute of Anthropology and History have taken part in a series of excavations since 2015 that have resulted in the finding of tzompantli.

[28] Apart from their use to display the skulls of ritualistically-executed war captives, tzompantli often occur in the contexts of Mesoamerican ball courts, which were widespread throughout the region's civilizations and sites.

The association with ball courts is also reflected in the Popol Vuh, the famous religious, historical and cultural account of the K'iche' Maya.

When Hun Hunahpu, father of the Maya Hero Twins, was killed by the lords of the Underworld (Xibalba), his head was hung in a gourd tree next to a ball court.

[38] In Charles Stross's Laundry Files novels, the new prime minister of the United Kingdom adds a tzompantli to the Marble Arch.