Chalchiuhtlicue

In Aztec creation mythic accounts Chalchiuhtlicue is the ruling water presence of the era called the Fourth Sun; according to those traditions she unleashed a prolonged rain that flooded and ended that world-age. Sources vary about her kinship within the pantheon: some texts present her as wife or sister of the rain god Tlaloc, while other traditions link her to Xiuhtecuhtli. After the flood narratives say she transformed some beings (for example into fish) and thereby established her jurisdiction over deaths by drowning; the accounts and genealogical attributions differ across manuscript and ethnographic sources.

Manuscript and sculptural evidence depict Chalchiuhtlicue with strong jade/blue-green associations and water iconography. Codex imagery (e.g., Codex Borbonicus, Codex Borgia) portrays her seated on a red stool or throne with a stream of water flowing from or behind her skirt and with infants or figures in the water. Sculptures are often carved of green stone or of gray basalt painted and originally inlaid, and iconography includes a characteristic headdress of broad cotton bands trimmed with amaranth seeds, large round tassels at the sides, a shawl with tassels and a skirt. Serpentine motifs and overlapping poses with other fertility figures (e.g., hands extended as in some representations of Chicomecōātl) appear in the visual record.

Sources attribute to Chalchiuhtlicue authority over many watery domains (groundwater, rivers, streams, seas) and functions in fertility and childbirth, ritual bathing and purification, the bathing of sacrificial victims and ceremonial actors, judicial purification, and royal investiture practices. Mythic narratives credit her with producing the catastrophic flood that destroyed the Fourth Sun and thereby exercising world-transforming agency; she is also said to have jurisdiction over deaths by drowning. She acts in concert and in tension with other rain/water deities (most prominently Tlaloc) within the Aztec pantheon.