Tōnacātēcuhtli
Aztec creator and fertility deity
In Aztec mythology, Tonacatecuhtli was a creator and fertility god, worshipped for populating the earth and making it fruitful. Most Colonial-era manuscripts equate him with Ōmetēcuhtli. His consort was Tonacacihuatl.
Tonacateuchtli is depicted in the Codex Borgia.
Etymology
The god's name is a compound of two Nahuatl words: tōnacā and tēcuhtli. While tēcuhtli is generally translated "lord", tōnacā presents several possible interpretations. Some read this root as tonacā (without the long 'o'), consisting of nacatl, meaning "human flesh" or "food", with the possessive prefix to ("our"). By this etymology, Tonacātēcuhtli would mean "Lord of Our Food" or "Lord of Our Flesh", most commonly rendered "Lord of Our Sustenance." The word tōnac simply means "abundance", giving Tōnacātēcuhtli the alternate reading "Lord of Abundance".
Origin and role
Tōnacātēcuhtli was the Central Mexican form of the aged creator god common to Mesoamerican religion. According to the Codex Ríos, the History of the Mexicans as Told by Their Paintings, the Histoyre du Mechique, and the Florentine Codex, Tōnacātēcuhtli and his consort Tōnacācihuātl resided in "in Tōnacātēuctli īchān" ("the mansion of the Lord of Abundance"), also known as Omeyocan, the 13th, highest heaven, from which human souls descended to earth.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tōnacātēcuhtli” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.