Nezahualcoyotl Acolmiztli ( , ), "Fasting Coyote" (April 28, 1402 – 1472) was tlatoani (king) of the Acolhua altepetl (city-state) of Texcoco from 1431 to his death in 1472, in pre-Columbian Mexico. He is noted for his achievements as a philosopher (tlamatini), warrior, architect, legislator and poet, earning him the nickname of "the Poet-King" (, in Spanish). In his lifetime, he was also known by his poetic nickname Yoyontzin. His difficult younger years following his father's assassination, and his efforts to reconquer his realm after being taken over by the powerful Tepanec Empire turned him into a hero in pre-Columbian society. In order to defeat the Tepanec Empire, and its ruler Maxtla, he formed an alliance with the (kings) of Mexico-Tenochtitlan and Tlacopan (Itzcoatl and Totoquihuaztli I), becoming one of the founders of the Aztec Triple Alliance, commonly known as the Aztec Empire. His odyssey has captured the public imagination, which has been compared to the Shakespearean story of Prince Hamlet, albeit he remains an enigmatic figure, due to the lack of sources from his own lifetime or from his contemporaries.: "Given his path, some even perceive him as a variation of Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh in Egypt whose monotheistic Atenism preceded the Abrahamic religion of the Israelites. And, in his melancholia, some look at him as a type of Hamlet, Shakespeare's 'Prince of Denmark,' who is defined by self-doubt. Either way, Nezahualcóyotl is an enigma."
He was the legitimate son of Ixtlilxochitl I, the king of Texcoco who declared war on the Tepanec Empire approximately in 1415. Nezahualcoyotl was declared crown prince soon after the war started, and about four years later, when he was just 16 years old, he witnessed his father being assassinated by Tepanec warriors while attempting to flee Texcoco. Nezahualcoyotl spent several years of his life in exile, seeking refuge in Tlaxcallan and Tenochtitlan and evading assassination attempts. Following the death of the Tepanec emperor Tezozomoc, Maxtla took the throne and attempted to assassinate Nezahualcoyotl on multiple occasions, unsuccessfully. When Chimalpopoca, king of Tenochtitlan (and Nezahualcoyotl's uncle), was assassinated in 1427, Itzcoatl, his successor, launched a revolution to end Tepanec rule over Mexico. He and Nezahualcoyotl formed an alliance to defeat the Tepanecas, and after a series of combats, they managed to overthrow Maxtla, killing him and destroying the Tepanec Empire. With Itzcoatl's support, Nezahualcoyotl formally took Texcoco's throne in 1431, beginning a period of prosperity that would last until the 16th century.
He is credited with starting Texcoco's golden age. During his reign, Nezahualcoyotl led the construction of massive and impressive engineering projects, with a particular focus on hydraulic engineering, building aqueducts, flood-preventing structures and botanical gardens which worked for the benefit of the population of the Valley of Mexico for decades after his death. The remains of the botanical gardens of Texcotzingo serve as physical evidence of the impressive engineering skill and appreciation for nature the people of Texcoco developed during his rule. He also established a Hammurabi-like legal system consisting of 80 laws addressing matters such as robbery, adultery, military misconduct and more. Through conquest, Nezahualcoyotl managed to expand his realm's territory beyond that which his predecessors had ruled; his conquests were done along side the conquests of the rulers of Tenochtitlan (Itzcoatl, Moctezuma I and Axayacatl). Texcoco became a respected nation by its neighbors in the Valley of Mexico, being observed as a hub of intellectuals, engineers and legal experts, though the violence of his conquests is reflected in songs from the regions he attacked.
In the present, Nezahualcoyotl is best remembered for his poetry and the philosophical ideas reflected in the surviving works attributed to him. His poems address themes such as the ephemerality of human life and the "eternal" nature of "flower and song." Such poems continue being taught to Mexican children at schools, and have been praised for their beauty for centuries, in spite of the destruction of indigenous literature following the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Throughout the centuries following his death, many writers in Mexico and elsewhere wrote about his achievements, poetry and prosperous reign. Nevertheless, he has also been the subject of multiple myths and legends that may not be historically accurate. The very authorship of the poems historically attributed to him has been a subject of intense debate among scholars of Aztec culture, and it is believed that various elements of his biography may have been exaggerated to create a heroic narrative. Regardless, his biography was recorded on multiple pictorial documents, known as codices, and after the Spanish conquest it was preserved by his descendants and multiple historians who had access to these codices. Historians since the 19th century have referred to Nezahualcoyotl as a "Renaissance man of Aztec culture," and have compared Texcoco during his reign to Classical Athens.
Name
The Nahuatl name Nezahualcoyotl is commonly translated as "Hungry Coyote" or "Fasting Coyote". More accurately, it means "Coyote With a Fasting Collar", from , meaning a collar made out of bands of paper twisted together. Collars of this kind were worn by those fasting to show others that they should not be offered food. William H. Prescott, who translates his name to "Hungry Fox", believes that Nezahualcoyotl gave himself this name in reference to his cunning, but also to the hardships he endured during the early years of his life. In various poetic compositions, Nezahualcoyotl is referred to as Yoyontzin, a nickname used by himself and others.
Historical sources Pictorial documents
One of the most important primary sources we possess to understand the history of pre-Columbian Texcoco is a manuscript painted sometime in the early 1540s, during the early colonial period in Mesoamerican history, known as the Codex Xolotl. It is a cartographic history document made in Texcoco, described by historian Lorenzo Boturini Benaducci as "a map of exquisite delicacy", as it is the most extensive of three Texcocan cartographic histories known to exist, the other two being the Mapa Quinatzin and the Tlohtzin Map, both of which were also made in the 1540s. An annotation in Spanish attributes the ownership of the Tlohtzin Map to a certain Don Diego Pimentel, who was a descendant of Nezahualcoyotl.
The Codex Xolotl probably adapted or copied from an early 15th-century manuscript which would have been commissioned by Nezahualcoyotl himself as a document to legitimize his rule "through stories about migrations, marriages, births, deaths, dynastic successions, usurpation, battles, treason, ambushes, murders, imprisonment, and so forth." All three of the mentioned documents (Xolotl, Quinatzin and Tlohtzin) are characterized by being written "without words," i.e. in iconic script, though this does not imply they cannot be read, as, while words are not recorded as they would be using an alphabet, they communicate meaning through the textual traditions of the people who made them, as finds in his study.
These manuscripts were used by historians such as Fray Juan de Torquemada and Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl in the 17th century to write a significant number of works, and continued changing hands following Ixtlilxóchitl's death, until ultimately arriving in Europe in the 1840s in the possession of a French scientist profoundly interested in Mexico's past, . All three of these manuscripts are currently housed at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Analysis of the Codex Xolotl requires careful examination, however, as it was made with the intent of glorifying the descendants of King Xolotl, that is, the dynasty which ruled Texcoco, and thus probably underestimates the merit of other peoples who inhabited the Valley of Mexico who are described in the codex. Moreover, this codex also contributed to the creation of a narrative that turned Nezahualcoyotl into a near-invincible hero, who managed to escape from almost certain death on multiple occasions by outsmarting his adversaries, such as the Tepanec emperor Maxtla. This narrative was subsequently enhanced and exaggerated by later writers who used this codex as a source of information, adding their own narratives onto the already existing heroic tale.
Other pictorial manuscripts depicting some of Nezahualcoyotl's deeds include the Codex en Cruz (a Texcocan source), Codex Azcatitlan (a Mexica source), and the (another Texcocan source). These three documents in particular depict some of Nezahualcoyotl's conquests and his participation in Mexica conquests during the reign of Moctezuma I.
An enormous number of pre-Columbian manuscripts were destroyed in book burnings on two occasions. The first occurred approximately in 1430, when the ruling elite of Mexico-Tenochtitlan consolidated its power and destroyed old histories for containing "falsehoods" that "could have undermined the realm." The second, more infamous occasion occurred following the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1521. Spanish missionaries gave themselves the objective of destroying any record that could remind the indigenous peoples of their pre-Christian past, burning the ancient texts in autos-da-fé. Nevertheless, chroniclers after the conquest created new manuscripts which were painted with a pre-Columbian style and adapted from the few ancient books that survived these book burnings.
Colonial-era works Works of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, a 17th-century historian who spent much of his life documenting the pre-Columbian history of Texcoco, was a direct descendant of Nezahualcoyotl through his mother's family, and had access to and possession of several pictorial manuscripts documenting the city's history, including the Codex Xolotl, the Mapa Quinatzin, and the Tlohtzin Map, which he likely inherited from his maternal family. He used these documents to write his Spanish-language accounts of Texcoco's history. In addition to these pictorial manuscripts, Ixtlilxóchitl cited, in his History of the Chichimec people (, 1625), "the [historical] reports that the infantes [princes] of Tetzcoco, don Pablo, don Toribio, and don Hernando Pimentel [Nezahualcoyotzin], and Juan de Pomar, sons and grandsons of Nezahualpiltzintli, wrote."
Ixtlilxóchitl has been a controversial historian for centuries due to his notorious biases in favor of Texcoco's monarchy. As early as the 17th century, Mexican antiquarian Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, who had access to the pictorial manuscripts and to Ixtlilxóchitl's works through the historian's son, had criticized him by writing an annotation in one of his own manuscripts: