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Etymologically, the term tzompantli is composed of the words tzontli (“hair” or “head”) and pantli (“row”), both belonging to Nahuatl. Its meaning refers to what certain historical accounts have described as poles or stakes on which the heads of sacrificed victims were skewered1. Archaeological discoveries have allowed us to see those ancient structures that some Mesoamerican cultures built to impale the skulls of immolated humans. This curious phenomenon has already been treated at length in various investigations and will hardly surprise those familiar with the Day of the Dead (because skulls are also piled up (even if they are made of sugar) to commemorate this festival); however, more interesting and less treated still is another historical truth: the tzompantli, or the piling up of skulls, is not a unique Mesoamerican phenomenon, but one shared universally by different cultures (and even species) throughout the centuries.
Without clear contact between Asian and Mesoamerican cultures, men on both sides of the world have practiced this monstrous art since ancient times: under the reign of Alauddin Khalji (late 13th century), for example, the Chor Minar (‘tower of thieves’) was built where, through the 225 holes designed ad hoc in the wall, the skulls of executed Mongol prisoners were publicly displayed. In times of war, these holes were used to display the skulls of the ringleaders (quite literally) or military leaders of the defeated side, while the skulls of the other soldiers were piled in a pyramid shape outside the tower.
Although probably exaggerated, certain accounts have described the towers that Tamerlane (ca. 1336 - 1405), chieftain of the Gurkani dynasty, ordered to be built with thousands of skulls belonging to the men of the populations he conquered. In reference to these conquests, Vereshchagin painted The Apotheosis of War, a painting showing a pyramid of skulls in the desert; behind it, the city of Samarkand can be seen.
Likewise, in the Akbarnama of Abul Fazl (II, XI, 41) the construction is recounted (carried out by the Mughal empire, founded by a descendant of Tamerlane himself) of a minaret with the heads of the Suris killed during the Second Battle of Panipat in 1556. Badayuni’s Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh (II, 17; 169) confirms this fact and reveals that it was a habitual practice during the rule of the Mughals in India. These three empires, the Khalji Turko-Afghan, the Gurkani or Timurid Turko-Mongol, and the Mughal Islamic Turkic, roamed the territory of Delhi where the Chor Minar can still be visited today, located towards the south of the city, in Sri Aurobindo Marg.
Finally, we also know that the vizier Hurshid Pasha ordered the erection of the Ćele kula (‘tower of skulls’) to impale the heads of the rebels fallen during the Battle of Čegar in 1809. It is a stone structure, located in Niš (a Serbian city) measuring 4.5 meters high and originally containing 952 skulls embedded on the four sides, across 14 rows. Around 1892 a chapel was built around it, but the wall of skulls is still preserved inside today.
Curiously, in his Voyage en Orient (‘Journey to the East’), the French poet Alphonse de Lamartine came to narrate his encounter with this tower (in 1833, only a couple of decades after its construction). It was a sunny day when he arrived at the town, and shortly after Lamartine sought a place to rest. Seeing a large white tower, he approached it and sat down to rest. A moment later, he raised his eyes to the monument and saw that its walls, which he had mistaken for white marble, were actually made of regular rows of human skulls: “These skulls and faces of men, emaciated and bleached by the rain and the sun, cemented by a little sand and lime, formed the entire triumphal arch that sheltered me; there could have been fifteen to twenty thousand; on some, the hair still hung and fluttered like lichen and moss in the wind; the mountain breeze blew brisk and fresh, and, embedded in the innumerable cavities of heads, of faces and of skulls, made them emit mournful and pitiful whistles. There was no one who could explain this barbaric monument to me”2. As Lamartine found out later, the exhibition of skulls (just as in all the other cases we have cited) was used as a warning and intimidation against the enemies of the empire3.
Between 1898 and 1905, the painter Paul Cézanne began to produce still lifes with a rather gloomy main theme: skulls. Among them, the works Pyramid of Skulls and Three Skulls stand out. His friend Joachim Gasquet relates that, shortly before his death, he liked to recite the Quartet (epigraph of the work Claire Lenoir, by L’Isle Adam) by Verlaine:
D’ailleurs en ce temps léthargique,
Sans gaîté comme sans remords,
Le seul rire encore logique,
C’est celui des têtes de morts.4
Finally, it is worth noting that we are not the only species that has shown this behavior. Entomologists5 have described how ants of the species Formica archboldi “collect” skulls of Odontomachus ants, which allows them to impregnate themselves with their scent to camouflage themselves among them (ants depend significantly on their sense of smell to distinguish between friends and enemies) and continue hunting them or, in their case, to hide from “kidnapper” ants. Anyone who peeks just a little into the history of humanity, and perhaps also into that of any other species, will always end up verifying the inescapable truth that nihil novum sub sole.
This article is the English translation of the original text published in Algarabía magazine.
In the Codex Durán, where cannibalism prior to the building of the tzompantli is also discussed: «De palo á palo por los agujeros benian unas barras delgadas en las quales estavan ensartadas muchas calaberas de honbres por las sienes tenia cada bara beinte cabeças llegaban estas rengleras de calaveras hasta lo alto de los maderos de la paliçada de cavo á cavo llena que me certificó un conquistador que eran tantas y tan sin cuento y tan espessas que ponian grandisima grima y admiracion estas calaveras todas eran de los que sacrificaban á los quales despues de muertos y comida la carne trayan la calavera y entregavanla á los ministros del tenplo y ellos las ensartaban ally preguntando si las mudavan ó quitavan de allí en algun tiempo dicen que no sino quellas de biejas y añejas se cayan a pedaços ecepto que quando la paliçada se enbejecia la tornaban á renobar y que al quitar se quebravan muchas y otras quitavan para que cupiesen mas y para que huviese lugar para los que delante havian de matar; pregunte si las ponian con su carne y todo respondieronme que no sino despues de havelles comido toda la carne trayan al templo solo el gueso aunque algunas les dejavan las cavelleras y asi se estavan alli asta que se les caya el cavello tanbien pregunte que se hacia de los demas guessos á lo qual me dixeron quel amo del yndio que se havia sacrificado los ponia en el patio de su casa en unas baras largas por trofeos de sus grandeças y haçañas y para que se supiese que aquel havia sido su prisionero avido en buena guerra».↩︎
Translation based on Volume II of Voyage en Orient, edited in Paris by Hachette Livre (1913, p. 256).↩︎
After this brief review, there should be no doubt about the infinite ways in which the prestigious philologist María Elvira Roca Barea, in her article on the “Aztec holocaust”, incurs in historical, archaeological, cultural and, of course, philological inaccuracies. Summarizing: tzompantlis were not holocausts because the sacrificed were not burned (ὅλος: “whole”, “entire”; καῡσος: “heat”, “burn”), nor were they Jews or rams; there are numerous archaeological studies published on this subject in Mexican universities and journals; Mexicans do not live blinded by a mythology that makes them believe that the god Quetzalcoatl founded Mexico; and lastly, the tzompantli has nothing to do with the conquest of Mexico, neither as a motive nor as a justification.↩︎
As I understand, Gasquet cited a form different from this one I present, the original. In English, without intention of maintaining the poetry of the verses, it says: “Besides in these lethargic times, / without gaiety as without remorse, / the only laughter still logical, / is that of the death’s heads”.↩︎
Smith, A.A. Prey specialization and chemical mimicry between Formica archboldi and Odontomachus ants. Insect. Soc. 66, 211–222 (2019).↩︎