国家地理图片：金字塔最新珍贵图片与新的挖掘线索 15p

Unburying the Aztec

The excavation of a sacred pyramid is turning up clues to the empire’s bloody rituals—but so far, no sign of its most feared emperor

While the fractured stone was still in situ, archaeologists used laser-driven pulses of light to produce a green 3-D image of it. In an adjacent shaft lay six offerings of artifacts.

In May a team of 30 technicians and two cranes took 15 hours to move the 12-ton stone of the earth goddess Tlaltecuhtli, broken into four pieces, about 500 feet from the excavation site to a new home in Mexico City's Templo Mayor Museum. A two-and-a-half-year restoration process has revealed traces of the andesite stone's original ocher, red, blue, white, and black pigment—but not the missing center of the monolith.

Its skeleton reassembled for museum display, the animal known as the Aristo-Canine wore a seashell belt.

Archaeologists, including ángel González, have already recovered tens of thousands of artifacts that will help scholars decode the Aztec view of the universe. The search for a royal tomb has moved to a new tunnel within the Templo Mayor excavation site, part of the remnants of ancient Tenochtitlan in the heart of Mexico City.

Red, white, and green lights illuminate the ruins of the Templo Mayor for nighttime visitors. Digs have revealed 13 phases of construction from 1375 to 1519, including the pyramid's double staircases.

Directly under Tlaltecuhtli, the largest offering yet unearthed held shells and corals, a tiny pine mask, a sawfish bill, 8,500 animal bones, a jar of grain, a scepter, and fire god sculptures.

This tiny pine mask was discovered in offering 126.

Inside the shaft beside the monolith, archaeologists found offering box 125, depicting what project leader López Luján calls a "miniature image of the universe." Among the treasures offered to the gods were a gold ornament (above).

Also found in offering 125 was this greenstone necklace.

Flint and copal knives (above) were also found inside offering box 125.

The missing piece at the center of the monolith of the earth goddess was never found.

Carved sometime before 1470, the image of the moon goddess Coyolxauhqui was at the foot of the Templo Mayor's steps until the carving was buried in a renovation of the pyramid around 1481. The stone, unearthed in 1978, recalls the legend of her murder by her brother, Aztec patron god Huitzilopochtli.

Near the bottom of offering 125, an obsidian scepter, bells, and a brown gourd filled with a tobacco-based drug surround a flint knife representing the god Techalotl, one of the gods of pulque. In today's terms, says archaeologist Leonardo López Luján, this was a "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll" deity, celebrating music, dance, drunkenness—all forms of play.

Symbols of exalted status, these golden bells found in offering box 125 near the Templo Mayor were part of a bracelet worn by a golden eagle. Similar bells could also decorate nobles' clothing.

A stone image of fire god Xiuhtecuhtli (Turquoise Lord), copal used for incense, and a sawfish bill are among thousands of artifacts discovered in offering box 126. The objects were presented to the gods as a way of consecrating the great stone, just before it was put in place.