various authors
16th-17th centuries
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NOTE |
The Pyramid of Cholula is the largest and grandest built in the ancient Americas, with a base larger than that of the Great Pyramid of Giza. In the colonial period, Catholic missionaries recorded stories from Nahuatl speakers that were suspiciously similar to Biblical accounts of the Tower of Babel, many of which were attached to the Cholula pyramid. Much later, a similar story was attributed to the Toltecs. In all cases, it is almost certain that the Mexican informants were related Bible stories learned from the earliest missionaries and incompletely assimilated. As José F. Ramirez, the nineteenth-century editor of one such text, wrote, “These and similar traditions, found in the writings of some early chroniclers of the Americas, are certainly the result of the imperfect notions of Christianity that the Indians acquired in the early days.” James George Frazer, who discussed these texts in his Folk-Lore in the Old Testament (1918) concurred. As proof we can note that the supposed Mexican stories contain elements—namely God overthrowing the tower—that are part of extra-biblical Christian folklore but which do not appear in the Bible itself. Therefore, because these later additions are no Biblical, it seems highly likely the Mexican accounts derive from a Christian missionary’s oral teachings. However, because the early friars declared these stories to be proof that Biblical teachings were known in the ancient Americas, these tales continue to be cited by creationists and pseudoscientists as independent evidence of the Tower of Babel story.
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Pedro de los Rios, Codex Rios (before 1563).
Before the great flood (apachihuiliztli) which occurred four thousand and eight hundred years after the creation of the world, the land of Anahuac was inhabited by giants (Tzocuillixeque). All those who did not perish were transformed into fish, except for seven who took refuge in caves. When the waters had receded, one of these giants, Xelhua, surnamed the Architect, went to Cholollan, where—in memory of Mount Tlaloc, which had served as a refuge for him and six of his brothers—he constructed an artificial hill in the form of a pyramid. He had the bricks made in the province of Tlamanalco, at the foot of the Sierra of Cocotl, and to transport them to Cholula he arranged a line of men who passed them from hand to hand. The gods saw this edifice with anger, for its summit was meant to reach the clouds. Irritated by Xelhua’s audacity, they hurled fire upon the pyramid; many workers perished, the work was not continued, and later it was consecrated to the god of the air, Quetzalcoatl.
Translated by Jason Colavito from the French translation of Alexander von Humboldt (Vues des Cordillères, vol. 1 [1816], 114-115).
Translated by Jason Colavito from the French translation of Alexander von Humboldt (Vues des Cordillères, vol. 1 [1816], 114-115).
Diego Durán, Historia de las Indias (1581).
In the beginning, before the light and sun were created, the earth was in darkness and gloom, void of all created things, quite flat, without hill or dale, encircled by water on every side, without trees and without any other created thing. As soon as the sun and the light were born in the east, some men appeared there, ungainly giants who possessed the land. Wishing to see the rising and the setting of the sun, they agreed to go in search of it; so dividing into two bands they journeyed, the one band toward the west, and the other toward the east. So they journeyed till they were stopped by the sea. Thence they resolved to return to the place from which they had set out: so they came back to the place called Iztacçulin ineminian. Not knowing how to reach the sun, and charmed with its light and beauty, they decided to build a tower so high that its top should reach the sky. In their search for materials with which to carry out their design they found a clay and a very sticky bitumen with which they began in a great hurry to build the tower. When they had reared it as high as they could, so high that it is said to have seemed to reach the sky, the lord of the heights was angry and said to the inhabitants of heaven, 'Have you seen how the inhabitants of the earth have built a tower so high and so proud to climb up here, charmed as they are with the light and beauty of the sun? Come, let us confound them; for it is not meet that the people of the earth, who live in bodies of flesh, should mix with us.' In a moment, the inhabitants of heaven, setting out towards the four quarters of the world, overthrew as by a thunderbolt the edifice which the men had built. After that, the giants, scared and filled with terror, separated and scattered in all directions over the earth.
I do not think it necessary to ask the reader to compare what we have been discussing with the first and second chapters of Genesis; for we so clearly see an Indian recounting the creation of the world, as well as the account in the second chapter of that same book regarding the giants, the Tower of Babel, and how men, covetous of reaching heaven and driven solely by the desire to glorify their own names, built it, only to be confounded by God. I am convinced and wish to convince others that those who provide this account heard it from their forebears and ancestors; and since these natives belong (in my opinion) to the lineage of that chosen people of God for whom He wrought great wonders, knowledge of biblical events and mysteries, along with the accompanying pictorial records, has been handed down from generation to generation. They attributed these events to this land and to occurrences within it, even while remaining ignorant of their true origins. Nor do I deny, nor can I deny, the existence of giants in this land; I can affirm this as an eyewitness, having encountered individuals of monstrous stature in certain places here. I believe there are others in Mexico who recall this: during the Corpus Christi procession, I saw one of these giants, an Indian dressed in yellow taffeta, carrying a partisan on his shoulder and wearing a helmet, who towered a full vara above everyone else.
Translated by James George Frazer (first paragraph) and Jason Colavito (second paragraph) from José F. Ramirez (ed.), Historia de las Indias de Nueva-España, vol. 1 (Mexico City, 1867), 6-7.
I do not think it necessary to ask the reader to compare what we have been discussing with the first and second chapters of Genesis; for we so clearly see an Indian recounting the creation of the world, as well as the account in the second chapter of that same book regarding the giants, the Tower of Babel, and how men, covetous of reaching heaven and driven solely by the desire to glorify their own names, built it, only to be confounded by God. I am convinced and wish to convince others that those who provide this account heard it from their forebears and ancestors; and since these natives belong (in my opinion) to the lineage of that chosen people of God for whom He wrought great wonders, knowledge of biblical events and mysteries, along with the accompanying pictorial records, has been handed down from generation to generation. They attributed these events to this land and to occurrences within it, even while remaining ignorant of their true origins. Nor do I deny, nor can I deny, the existence of giants in this land; I can affirm this as an eyewitness, having encountered individuals of monstrous stature in certain places here. I believe there are others in Mexico who recall this: during the Corpus Christi procession, I saw one of these giants, an Indian dressed in yellow taffeta, carrying a partisan on his shoulder and wearing a helmet, who towered a full vara above everyone else.
Translated by James George Frazer (first paragraph) and Jason Colavito (second paragraph) from José F. Ramirez (ed.), Historia de las Indias de Nueva-España, vol. 1 (Mexico City, 1867), 6-7.
Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl, Relaciones (1608).
The Toltecs acquired knowledge of the creation of the world and how Tloque Nahuaque created it, along with all the other things within it, such as plants, mountains, animals, birds, water, and fish. They also knew how God created a man and a woman, from whom humanity descended and multiplied; regarding this, they recount many fables that are omitted here to avoid verbosity, though it is hardly surprising, as other nations of the world have done the same. They say that the world was created in the year Ce Tecpatl, and this time until the deluge they call Atonatiuh, which means the age of the sun of water, because the world was destroyed by the deluge. It is found in the histories of the Toltecs that this age and first world, as they term it, lasted seven hundred and sixteen years; that man and all the earth were destroyed by great showers and by lightnings from heaven, so that nothing remained, and the most lofty mountains were covered up and submerged to the depth of caxtolmoletltli, or fifteen cubits, and here they add other fables of how men came to multiply again from the few who escaped the destruction in a toptlipetlacali; which word very nearly signifies a closed chest; and how, after multiplying, the men built a zacuali of great height, and by this is meant a very high tower, in which to take refuge when the world should be a second time destroyed. After this their tongue became confused, and, not understanding each other, they went to different parts of the world.
Translated by Jason Colavito (first two sentences) and James George Frazer, from the Relaciones of Don Fernando de Alva Cortés, in Lord Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, vol. 9 (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1848), 321.
Translated by Jason Colavito (first two sentences) and James George Frazer, from the Relaciones of Don Fernando de Alva Cortés, in Lord Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, vol. 9 (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1848), 321.
