Aztec PantheonSacred Site
Coatepec (Serpent Mountain)
The mythical mountain where Huitzilopochtli was born fully armed to defeat his sister Coyolxauhqui and four hundred brothers. The Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan was a recreation of this sacred mountain.
About Coatepec (Serpent Mountain)
Serpent Mountain, Huitzilopochtli's birth
Coatepec is the mountain where Coatlicue conceives Huitzilopochtli from a ball of down, and where he bursts forth armed to dismember Coyolxauhqui and scatter the Centzon Huitznahua. Sahagun's Florentine Codex Book 3 is the main prose witness. The Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan restaged that mountain: Coyolxauhqui at the foot, the sun-war god at the summit. There is no second literary Coatepec required. The myth is a temple plan.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Florentine Codex, Book 3 (Sahagun)
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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