La Jornada: The Temple of Ehécatl and the Tenochtitlan Ball Court open to the public

The remains of the northern exterior side of the Ball Court or Teotlachco of Tenochtitlan, the only currently visible fragment of the Mexica ritual structure, are located just under the foundations of the Hotel Catedral on Guatemala 16, a busy street – which leads to the Templo Mayor, at the back of the Metropolitan Cathedral – where thousands of people wander daily without imagining that in the underground there were not only “symbolic wars”, but that “it was the game of the gods, one more temple of the related sacred precinct with their religion and worldview, where the tlatoanis also came to play.”

This sacred building was of a ritual, mythical-religious, symbolic and recreational nature, in which conflicts were settled, bets were made and human sacrifices were made for various reasons, explained archaeologist Raúl Barrera Rodríguez, director of the Urban Archeology Program (PAU) of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), in an interview with The Dayand recalled that the discovery of the Mexica Ball Game, after records of its existence at different times, was finally revealed in 2014 during the second season of excavations at the Guatemala 16 site.

Barrera will also address this topic in the context of the Social World Cup, in the conference “El Teotlachco: architecture and symbolism” that he will give on July 25 as part of the cycle The Ball Game in Tenochtitlanwhich will take place on Saturdays from July 4 to August 29 at the Templo Mayor Museum, where several specialists will participate.

The only visible fragment of the Ball Game is part of the underground museum of the Ehécatl Quetzalcóatl Temple, God of the Wind, where it can be accessed for the first time on guided tours, by appointment, which is located under the modern architecture of the Hotel Catedral, where 6 meters below the current floor you can see “a platform oriented from east to west that presents three construction moments possibly contemporary with stages V (1481-1486), VI (1486-1502) and VII (1502-1521) of the Templo Mayor”.

The archaeologist detailed: “the penultimate stage is the one that is best preserved, it has an approximate width of 9 meters and is located 6.45 meters south of the Temple of Ehecátl. The work also allowed the identification of the superposition of two staircases, with their respective sidewalks on the north side.”

The other end of the platform, he added, “is made up of the superposition of three stucco walls. In its upper part, there are remains of bedroom benches and a stucco floor with holes for wooden posts.”

First findings

The first findings related to the Tenochca Ball Game date back to the beginning of the 20th century, during the construction of a drainage on Guatemala Street “which runs from east and west; it is the same collector that passes through the Templo Mayor, it is a work that was done in the time of Porfirio Díaz, when there was an archaeological rescue and a meticulous record of Leopoldo Batres, the same one who excavated the pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan and carried out work in other parts of the country.”

On that occasion, “Batres found some offerings, in which there was a kind of stone box with flint knives among other objects; outside this container he found a sculpture, a sphere 75 centimeters high by 54 centimeters wide, with the representation of a rubber ball, a kind of vegetable basket, which is exhibited in the National Museum of Anthropology.”

Days later, Batres himself found “five stone spheres around 15 centimeters long that represent rubber balls, which was a very important discovery because another sumptuous offering was also found, with a sculpture in a seated position, one meter high, with the representation of the deity Xochipilli-Macuilxóchitl, patron of music, games and dance.”

Another relevant moment occurred during the construction of Metro line 2, from Toreo to Tasqueña, between 1968 and 1969. “There was an archaeological rescue coordinated by Jordi Gussinyer and when carrying out work behind the Cathedral, an offering was found composed of 10 small objects and inside the box there were two small ball game models and, one of them, had side holes, which indicates that this object was carried by a priest during They also found other elements such as flutes, drums and a representation of the aforementioned deity, including the detection of remains of two transverse staircases, from north to south and with access from east to west, so Jordi Gussinyer thought they were part of the Huei Tzompantli.

“In the 90s Eduardo Matos Moctezuma – the founder of the Templo Mayor Project – reviewed the works of Gussinyer himself, but proposed that the stairs were not from the Tzompantli, but from the Ball Court and he was right.”

At the end of the last century, the PAU carried out geometric correction work on the Metropolitan Cathedral because it was uneven and the idea was that this sinking would be stabilized.

The archaeological rescue was coordinated by Francisco Hinojosa and Álvaro Barrera, who was also responsible for the program.

“At that time, 32 luminaires were made in different points of the religious precinct, including those at the back of the Cathedral, and one more almost at the height of the Altar of the Kings, where the remains of the east head of the Ball Court were found, as well as an offering; later they did a survey in the Chapel of Ánimas and discovered the remains of the west head, with another offering, as well as small balls and miniatures in mother-of-pearl shell.”

Portal to the underworld

Now, after the work that Raúl Barrera has led, he reports that the Ball Court “could have had a length of 50 meters from east to west and 30 meters wide in its outline. The building was shaped like a double T or Latin I; in addition, it had various connotations and motifs in its practice, which also has to do with religion and its myths, such as the recreation of the fight that Huitzilopochtli had with Coyolxauhqui and his brothers the Centzon Huitznahua.”

The Ball Game court, Barrera pointed out, “has symbolism because it represents the earth’s surface, it means a portal to the underworld and connects with the cosmos. Its purpose is the renewal of life, where the fertility of the earth and death are related. And because it is the game of the gods, the tlatoani also played in this place, while the players were like combatant warriors immersed in symbolic wars.”

Barrera commented that in Mesoamerica “more than 3,000 ball games have been recorded and in Mexico there is archaeological evidence of 1,233.” Likewise, in places such as the southwest of the United States, Central America, the Antilles, the Dominican Republic and Cuba there have also been records of these mythical structures.

Guided tours are now available at the Ehécatl-Quetzalcóatl Temple and the Tenochtitlán Ball Court, from Tuesday to Saturday, at three times: 9:30 a.m., 11 a.m. and 12 p.m., by appointment, at any of the following emails: [email protected] y [email protected]. Access is included in the museum entrance fee, which is 105 pesos for nationals and foreigners residing in Mexico. Until next July 19, the staff of the Educational Communication area of ​​the Templo Mayor Museum will give the tours in groups of a maximum of 15 people; After that date, the spaces will close again so archaeologists can continue their explorations.