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Shelf entry · Aztec

Quetzalcoatl departure legend (Brinton, American Hero-Myths, pp. 115-116, after Sahagun / Anales de Cuauhtitlan)

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traditionAztec
cited by 1 connection
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serpent · serpent-5

The water-bound serpent/fish teacher who takes nothing and leaves everything: both figures deliver a complete civilizational curriculum (writing, law, temple, calendar/geometry), consume nothing while doing it (Oannes 'took no food'; Quetzalcoatl's treasures are left behind), and then exit across or into the sea · one nightly, one finally · with the record explicitly closed at their departure: 'nothing material has been added' since Oannes; 'no one knows how' Quetzalcoatl arrived where he was going. In both, the sea is where the teacher is native and where the account is permitted to end.

The plumed-serpent teacher of the arts, leaving Tollan, reaches the coast: he 'constructed a raft of serpents, and seating himself on it as in a canoe, he moved out to sea. No one knows how or in what manner he reached Tlapallan.'

set against Babyloniaca fr. 1, apud Alexander…

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