Project description
What is hidden behind 'teotl,' the fundamental religious category of the pre-Hispanic Nahua
For centuries, scholars have grappled with the intricate complexity of Nahua (Aztec) deities, particularly the enigmatic term teotl, which proves challenging to fully understand when translated simply as ‘god’. To address this issue comprehensively, the TEOTL project, funded by the European Research Council, takes a multifaceted approach that integrates multiple perspectives and innovative analytical tools. This project aims to uncover the core concepts of pre-Hispanic Nahua religious beliefs by examining four key aspects: the Nahua pantheon; the intricate relationship between teotl and other significant religious categories like tonalli, nahualli, and ixiptla; the thorough philological analysis of teotl within collocations, compounds, and the discourse found in Nahuatl texts; and the assimilation of the concept of teotl into colonial Nahuatl Christian discourse.
Objective
Since the 16th century, the polymorphous and overlapping identities of Nahua (Aztec) deities have puzzled, first, the friars carrying out their evangelization project in New Spain, and later, throngs of researchers eager to better understand the pre-Hispanic Nahua system of beliefs. Despite many scholarly efforts, today, we are still far from satisfactorily apprehending the various intricacies of of the concept of teotl. Rendering of the Nahuatl term teotl as god, helpful as it was in the process of cultural translation, neither reflects its full semantic scope nor explains ontological and cosmological implications of this notion. Nevertheless, up to this date, no one has attempted to embrace this problem bringing together multiple yet complementary perspectives integrated by an innovative set of analytical tools.
The project TEOTL aims at unfolding the underlying notions of this pre-Hispanic Nahua key religious concept by combining its four crucial aspects. These are:
1. Nahua pantheon;
2. teotl in relation to other important religious categories, such as tonalli, nahualli, or ixiptla;
3. philological analysis of the term teotl in collocations, compounds, and the discourse of Nahuatl texts;
4. appropriation of the notion of teotl in colonial Nahuatl Christian discourse.
Using the heterogeneous textual and iconographic dataset derived from the well-known source base, TEOTL will employ a novel combination of research methods at the intersection of traditional (ethnohistory, religious studies, art history, philology, linguistics) and digital humanities (network analysis in historical sciences). This unexplored research path will lead to a reconceptualization of our approach towards the Nahua notion of the sacred and its decolonization. Also, the obtained results may be applicable outside of Mesoamerican studies as a model for approaching similar non-Western cultural and religious phenomena.
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- humanities languages and literature linguistics
- humanities history and archaeology history
- social sciences other social sciences development studies development theories post-colonial theories
- humanities languages and literature literature studies history of literature
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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(opens in new window) ERC-2022-STG
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00-927 Warszawa
Poland
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