Student’s Sheet

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY – MEXICO CITY

PRE-VIEWING

Read the text below and answer the questions that follow it.

WHAT WAS TENOCHTITLAN?

Tenochtitlan was a city state located on an island in Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico. Founded in 1325, it was the capital of the growing Aztec empire in the 15th century until its defeat in 1521. Today ancient Tenochtitlan is known as Mexico City.

The city fell on August 13, 1521. According to the chronicler Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, “Almost all the Aztec nobility died, the only survivors being a few lords and gentlemen, mostly children or extremely young people.” Cuauhtémoc, the last emperor, was taken prisoner and kept alive for a time. Then he was executed on the pretext of a plot. The Aztec empire had collapsed and Tenochtitlan was gone. Cortés set out to rebuild the capital and continue the conquest. A year later he became governor and captain-general of New Spain.

After the Spanish conquest and the subsequent building programs they instituted, most of the great city of Tenochtitlan remained buried until the year 1790, when excavation for water pipes uncovered two Aztec sculptures, the Sun Stone and the Statue of Coatlicue or the mother goddess.

Today, the ruins of Tenochtitlan are a very popular attraction, located under the present day Mexico City. After nearly five hundred years, little has been found of Tenochtitlan, though excavation continues in hopes that more will be uncovered.

Adapted from: http://quezi.com/4953

QUESTIONS

1. What was the name of the capital of the Aztec Empire? 2. For how long did this Empire exist? 3. Why was the last emperor of the Aztec Empire executed? 4. What happened to Tenochtitlan after the Spanish conquest? 5. Has all Tenochtitlan been uncovered?

WHILE VIEWING A

“Coatlicue” was an Aztec goddess. Watch the video and pay attention to why “Coatlicue” is a fascinating piece of work.

WHILE VIEWING B

Watch the video and fill in the blanks with the words you hear in the description of “Coatlicue”.

MEXICO CITY MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY

Mexico City’s Museum of Anthropology is considered one of the best of its kind in the world. It houses archeological treasures charting Mexican culture from pre-historical times right through to Modern indigenous life. This is the most fascinating piece of work for me at the Museum. It’s called Coatlicue, which means “Skirt of Serpents” and it’s the “Goddess of Earth”, and actually what she has for a ________, because here, right here in the skin of a ________there is a ________and a little _____ inside, which is the Aztec symbol for ______. So, what she actually has as a head is two great ________ of blood that go all the way around, making two heads, two serpent heads. They come out of her ________. That’s right. And they’re like ________ each other and you can see the ________ and the ________that goes next to the ________ of the goddess and on the ________ she has a ________ with __________ and then, all the way around she has the serpent ________. She’s pinned it on her back with another __________, and also her ___________ are serpent faces. And that center over there is actually the center of Tenochtitlan, which is the same as this one. And is this what this Okolo is today? It’s the same place. It’s just like…..they put the pyramids down and destroyed everything. So the colonialists destroyed all these buildings. And put the churches over them.

But what priests did in order to perform the human sacrifices is to ……well….kill the person and then they took the skin of the person out with her and everything and the priest put the skin over him and then he took the beating heart and … in one of these, the heart also beating…….. Like, in this? In this rock. This rock saw many beating hearts. That’s right.

WHILE VIEWING C

Watch the video again and check your answers.

POST-VIEWING

Look at the sculpture of “Coatlicue” and use the vocabulary in the box to write a paragraph describing it.

snake woman circle teeth tongue skirt hands mouth face square blood goddess human heads feet serpents claws necklace breasts shoulders skull

“Coatlicue” is represented as a woman wearing……….