Lords of the Night
In Mesoamerican mythology the Lords of the Night (Classical Nahuatl: Yohualtecuhtin) are a set of nine deities who each ruled over every ninth night forming a calendrical cycle. Each lord was associated with a particular fortune, bad or good, that was an omen for the night that they ruled over.[1]
The lords of the night are known in both the Aztec and Maya calendar, although the specific names of the Maya Night Lords are unknown.[2]
The glyphs corresponding to the night gods are known and Mayanists identify them with labels G1 to G9, the G series. Generally, these glyphs are frequently used with a fixed glyph coined F. The only Mayan light lord that has been identified is the God G9, Pauahtun the Aged Quadripartite God.[3][4]
The existence of a 9 nights cycle in Mesoamerican calendrics was first discovered in 1904 by Eduard Seler. The Aztec names of the Deities are known because their names are glossed in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis and Codex Tudela. Seler argued that the 9 lords each corresponded to one of the nine levels of the underworld and ruled the corresponding hour of the nighttime; this argument has not generally been accepted, since the evidence suggests that the lord of a given night ruled over that entire night.[5] Zelia Nuttall argued that the Nine Lords of the Night represented the nine moons of the Lunar year.[6] The cycle of the Nine Lords of the Night held special relation to the Mesoamerican ritual calendar of 260-days and nights which includes exactly 29 groups of 9 nights each, and also, approximately, 9 vague lunations of 29 days each.
The Nine Lords of the Night in Aztec mythology are:[5]
- Xiuhtecuhtli ("Turquoise Lord/Lord of Fire")
- Tezcatlipoca ("Smoking Mirror")
- Piltzintecuhtli ("Noble Lord")
- Centeotl ("Maize God")
- Mictlantecuhtli ("Underworld Lord")
- Chalchiuhtlicue ("Jade Is Her Skirt")
- Tlazolteotl ("Filth God[dess]")
- Tepeyollotl ("Heart of the Mountains")
- Tlaloc ("Rain")
Sources[edit]
- ^ Anthony F. Aveni. 2001. Skywatchers: A Revised and Updated Version of Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico. University of Texas Press. pp. 156-57
- ^ Gabrielle Vail, Christine L. Hernández. 2010. Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests: Intellectual Interchange Between the Northern Maya Lowlands and Highland Mexico in the Late Postclassic Period. Harvard University Press p. 291
- ^ Lynn V. Foster. 2005. Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World. Oxford University Press. p. 259
- ^ http://www.pauahtun.org/Calendar/gglyph.html Archived 2006-02-22 at the Wayback Machine Night Gods discussion in Pauahtun
- ^ a b Elizabeth Hill Boone. 2007. Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate. University of Texas Press pp. 44-45
- ^ Zelia Nuttall. 1904. The Periodical Adjustments of the Ancient Mexican Calendar. American Anthropologist , New Series, Vol. 6, No. 4 pp. 486-500
