Hans Rustad Mexicanske arkeologer har funnet gravkamre under en bygning fra den spanske kolonitiden, midt i hjertet av Mexico, og tror aztekenes siste store hersker er begravet der.
Det er Ahuizotl, som hersket over aztek-riket da Colombus landet på de vestindiske øyer. Ahuizotl døde i 1502. Det er en voldsom interesse for funnet i Mexico. Det bunner i et ønske om å gjøre tiden før conquistadorene til sin. Erobringen ødela kulturen og skapte en stor lakune i den historiske bevissthet. Spanierne rev hovedstaden Tenochtitlan og bygget på toppen av ruinene. Disse bygningene er i seg selv blitt historiske. Men jordskjelvet i 1985 ødela hus, som siden har måttet rives. Det er under et slikt man har funnet gravkamrene.
As early as this fall, they hope to enter the inner chambers — a damp, low-ceilinged space — and discover the ashes of Ahuizotl, who was likely cremated on a funeral pyre in 1502.
By that time, Columbus had already landed in the New World. But the Aztecs’ first contact with Europeans came 17 years later, in 1519, when Hernan Cortes and his band of conquistadors marched into the Mexico Valley and took hostage Ahuizotl’s successor, his nephew Montezuma.
Ahuizotl’s son Cuauhtemoc (kwow-TAY-mock) took over from Montezuma and led the last resistance to the Spaniards in the battle for Mexico City in 1521. He was later taken prisoner and killed. Like Montezuma, his burial place is unknown.
Because no Aztec royal tomb has ever been found, the archaeologists are literally digging into the unknown. Radar indicates the tomb has up to four chambers, and scientists think they will find a constellation of elaborate offerings to the gods on the floor.
«He must have been buried with solemn ceremony and rich offerings, like vases, ornaments … and certainly some objects he personally used,» said Luis Alberto Martos, director of archaeological studies at Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.
The tomb’s curse — water — may also be its blessing. Lopez Lujan said the constant temperature of the pH-neutral water in the flooded chambers, together with the lack of oxygen, discourages decomposition of materials like wood and bone that have been found at other digs around the pyramid, which was all but destroyed in the Conquest.
«This would be quite an important find for Aztec archaeology,» said Michael Smith, an archaeologist at Arizona State University who is not connected to the dig. «It would be tremendously important because it would be direct information about kingship, burial and the empire that is difficult to come by otherwise.»
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Any artifacts linked to Ahuizotl would bring tremendous pride to Mexico. The country has sought unsuccessfully to recover Aztec artifacts like the feather-adorned «shield of Ahuizotl» and the «Montezuma headdress» from the Ethnology Museum in Vienna, Austria.«Imagine it — this wasn’t just any high-ranking man. The Aztecs were the most powerful society of their time before the arrival of the Spaniards,» Martos said. «That’s why Ahuizotl’s tomb down there is so important.»
