History of the Aztec Sun Stone

Dr. Anthony Peet
5/19/12



Sun Stone From Wikimedia Commons

  

Between the years 1427 and 1479, the Aztecs carved and dedicated an astronomical basalt monument known today as the Sun Stone. Its face was once vibrantly painted in red, yellow, blue and white, and through a mosaic of hieroglyphs, the Sun Stone highlights the 52 year Calendar Round. With its completion just over a decade before Columbus discovered the new world, the Sun Stone is over 100 years older than the Gregorian Calendar used today!

The original home of the Sun Stone was at the crown of the main pyramid, the Templo Mayor, of the Aztec capitol, Tenochtitlan. When Hernan Cortes discovered Tenichtitlan in the year 1519, it was one of the largest cities in the world, located on an island in the Valley of Mexico. In July of 1521, Cortes conquered the Aztecs, then ruled by Moctezuma II, and razed Tenochtitlan to the ground. It can be assumed that the Sun Stone fell with the Templo Mayor at that time.

However, perhaps due to its tremendous size (it is, after all, 12 feet in diameter, 3 feet thick and weighs over 24 tons!), the Sun Stone was spared from total destruction. However, it lay buried for nearly 250 years beneath what soon became the Zocalo, or city square, of Mexico City. The Metropolitan Cathedral was constructed over the ruins of the Templo Mayor and in December of 1790, the Sun Stone was rediscovered during repair work on the cathedral.

The Sun Stone was temporarily planted into one of the cathedral's opulent towers until 1885 when it was then transferred to Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology where it remains today.