other · mythology

Leyenda de los Soles — Legend of the Five Suns

c. 1400–1521 CE (written); oral tradition older · Pre-Columbian (Aztec/Mexica) · Valley of Mexico (Tenochtitlan)

The First Sun — Four Jaguar

1It is told that this is how the world was founded long ago.
2One by one, here are its foundations: how the earth was established.
3How each sun was founded.
4What was the sustenance of each.
5And in what form the destruction of each arrived.
6The first sun to be founded had the sign Four Jaguar.
7It was called the Sun of the Jaguar.
8In it these things happened: the sky was not yet in place,
9And this sun did not last long.
10In it lived the giants whom the gods had made.
11The giants ate only pine nuts, and they were called the Acatonal.
12When this sun was destroyed, they were eaten by jaguars.
13It ended in the year One Reed.

The Second Sun — Four Wind

14The second sun was founded with the sign Four Wind.
15It was called the Sun of the Wind.
16In it, everything was carried off by the wind.
17The people became monkeys.
18They were scattered into the forests.
19The sun itself was blown away by the wind,
20And it ended in the year One Flint Knife.

The Third Sun — Four Rain

21The third sun was founded with the sign Four Rain.
22It was called the Sun of Rain.
23It so happened that fire rained down.
24Those who lived there were burned.
25And they became turkeys.
26The sun itself burned; in those days it rained stones.
27And the tezontle stone rained down and boiled up;
28The reddish stone came up in bubbles.
29It ended in the year One Flint Knife.

The Fourth Sun — Four Water

30The fourth sun was founded with the sign Four Water.
31It was called the Water Sun.
32For forty-two years it endured.
33Then it ended when the water came.
34The sky came crashing down and the suns did not move from their places.
35The people became fish.
36The water lasted fifty-two years, and then it ended.

The Fifth Sun — The Present Age

37This sun, its sign Four Movement, is called the Sun of Movement.
38This is our sun, in which we live today.
39And here is its omen, as the elders were wont to say:
40There will be earthquakes and hunger,
41And then our end shall come.
42In the year One Rabbit, the earth and sky were founded.
43The earth and sky were set in place at Teotihuacan.
44But they said the sun did not move —
45It could not go without blood.
46Then the gods conferred together.
47Who will live? Who will be the sun?
48Tecuciztecatl said: I will be the sun.
49Then the gods asked Nanahuatzin:
50You, too, be the sun, you the humble one.
51He bowed his head and consented.
52Then a fire was made, and the gods stood around in a circle.
53Tecuciztecatl tried four times to hurl himself into the fire —
54And four times his courage failed.
55Then Nanahuatzin, with one leap, threw himself into the fire.
56He burned; he crackled and sizzled.
57When Tecuciztecatl saw that Nanahuatzin had cast himself into the fire,
58He, too, leaped in. He too burned.
59And so it is said that when Tecuciztecatl would have been the sun
60He had tried four times and failed.
61That is why he is the moon and not the sun.
62But the sun would not move without blood.
63So the gods sacrificed themselves, piercing their hearts,
64And gave their own blood so that the sun might move.
65And the sun began to move, following its path.
66And so the fifth sun — our sun — came to be.

notes

The Leyenda de los Soles (Legend of the Five Suns) is a Nahuatl text preserved in the Codex Chimalpopoca, a colonial-period manuscript compiled around 1558 CE recording Aztec (Mexica) mythology and history. It records the Aztec doctrine of the Five Suns — five successive cosmic ages, each created and destroyed by a different catastrophe, with the present world being the fifth. Each age corresponds to a day-sign: Jaguar, Wind, Rain, Water, and Movement (Earthquake). The mythology of the Fifth Sun — created at Teotihuacan when the humble god Nanahuatzin threw himself into the sacrificial fire while the proud Tecuciztecatl hesitated — explains both the movement of the sun (which required the self-sacrifice of the gods to set in motion) and the Aztec institution of human sacrifice (which continued the divine act of blood-giving that powered the cosmos). This creation narrative has deep structural parallels with other world-creation myths in this archive: the repeated failed attempts at creating the proper cosmic order (Popol Vuh), the sacrifice of a primordial being to create the world (Purusha Sukta, Enuma Elish with Tiamat), and the requirement of divine sacrifice to sustain life. Translation draws on Daniel Brinton, Rig Veda Americanus (1890) and composite scholarly tradition. Public domain.

currently held: Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City (Codex Chimalpopoca)

CreationFlood NarrativeCosmologyMesoamericanAztec

related texts

The Popol Vuhother · c. 1500 CE (written); oral tradition much older

## Part I — The Creation of the World [1] This is the account of when all was still silent and motionless. [2] All was invisible, all was calm, in the sky, in the earth. [3] There was nothing standing; only the tranquil sea, and the great expanse of the sky. [4] There was nothing brought together…

Enuma Elishakkadian · c. 1100 BCE (surviving version); older oral traditions

## Tablet I — Before the World Was Named [1] When on high the heaven had not been named, [2] firm ground below had not been called by name, [3] naught but primordial Apsu, their begetter, [4] and Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all, [5] their waters commingling as a single body — [6] no reed hut h…

Genesis 1–11 (Creation and Flood Narratives)hebrew · c. 900–500 BCE (written); older oral traditions

## Chapter 1 — The Creation: Six Days [1] In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. [2] And the earth was without form, and void; [3] And darkness was upon the face of the deep. [4] And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. [5] And God said, Let there be light: and ther…