Mesoamerican · Nahuatl · c. 1570, from pre-conquest material
Annals of Cuauhtitlan and the Legend of the Suns
Anonymous Nahua annalists; the Codex Chimalpopoca
Nahua history written in Nahuatl by Nahua annalists after the conquest, which is a rarer thing than it sounds. It carries the succession of the five suns and the fullest account of Quetzalcoatl at Tollan: the ruler shamed by Tezcatlipoca into drunkenness and flight, who burns himself on the shore and becomes the morning star. A god's disgrace narrated by his own tradition rather than by a friar.
Read Annals of Cuauhtitlan and the Legend of the Suns in full at the linked edition →What this text attests · 3
| Name here | Rank given | # | Powers described |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | The keeper of the bones of the previous humanity, who sets conditions for their release and then tries to renege — Quetzalcoatl escapes with them, drops them, and the pieces make people of uneven size. A lord of the dead who bargains in bad faith and is outrun is a specific character, and the corpus had him only as an office before this. | |
| — | — | The disgrace at Tollan, told by Nahua annalists in Nahuatl: shamed by Tezcatlipoca into drunkenness and into breaking his own observances, he leaves, burns himself on the eastern shore and rises as the morning star. A god's fall narrated by his own tradition rather than by a friar is the rarest kind of evidence this corpus holds. | |
| — | — | The agent of that fall, working by mirror, by disguise and by drink rather than by force — the god who ruins another god's reputation and takes the city. Set against the corpus's other adversaries he is unusual in that he wins, and the tradition goes on honouring him for it. |
