The eight omens before the conquest
Book 12 of the Florentine Codex, compiled by Bernardino de Sahagún with Nahua scholars by about 1577, lists eight omens seen in Tenochtitlan in the ten years before the Spaniards came.
1509 CE · 19.44, -99.13 · status: account
The account
They are: a fiery column in the eastern sky; the temple of Huitzilopochtli bursting into flames; a thatched temple struck by lightning without thunder; a comet by day; the lake boiling up and flooding houses; a woman weeping at night for her children; a crane with a mirror on its head; and men with two heads who vanished when brought to the ruler. Diego Durán and Diego Muñoz Camargo recorded similar lists.
The sceptical view
Historians such as Camilla Townsend note that the omens were written down decades after the conquest and partly follow European models of portents before a fall; they tell us how survivors made sense of the catastrophe, not necessarily what was seen at the time.
Connections in the atlas
- The last New Fire ceremony, Huixachtlan
- First omen: the fiery column in the east
- Fifth omen: the lake boils
- Seventh omen: the crane with a mirror
- Cortés as Quetzalcoatl? The returning-god story
- Second omen: Huitzilopochtli's temple burns
- Sixth omen: the woman weeping in the night