The Abraham Cowley Text and Image Archive

Savage Gods of the Aztecs (detail): Huitzilopochtli, "Mexicans' highest god"

Partly prompted perhaps by the infamous rites to this god on the summit of the Templo Mayor, this engraving transfers to the warrior-god Huitzilopochtli (once described as a "Mexican Hercules") an especially shocking sacrificial tableau which the source-codex clearly assigns to the god of death, Mictlantecuhtl.