Teotihuacán's City Grid And The Pyramid Of The Sun

Even the most objective artists can only paint themselves. Whether city streets or poetry, inherent in any creation there is this inclusion of the creator’s values found somewhere in the work. With enough scrutiny, the minds of the artists can be unwoven. Extrapolating this analogy to ancient cities like Teotihuacán, Mayan values and points of cultural emphasis can be derived and stitched together to form a more tangible understanding of who these people were and to which gods they prayed. Specifically for the Maya, the notion of the father sun god was a significant part of their culture, even serving a main role in the Mayan origin story. Through an analysis of Teotihuacán’s city grid and of the Pyramid of the Sun, these structures can
With only small roads and foliage separating it from the wilderness, the pyramid lies on the eastern side of the city. By placing the temple to the easternmost point of the city, it is allowed the first light of the rising sun. This highlights the intimate manner with which the pyramid is revered and assigns degree of primacy to specifically this center of worship because it is first the temple to discard the shroud of darkness each day. In addition to this, the Pyramid of the Sun is not just the largest religious structure, but the largest building in the city by far. By using size as a metaphor for importance, the Pyramid of the Sun is easily designated as the most highly regarded building in the city and by extension, the sun itself becomes the clear symbols for the Teotihuacáns. This primacy in both size and placement serve to underscore the Teotihuacán culture that is developed around the sun and its delineation as the primary source of worship and religious emphasis for the peoples of
This is structured such that the horizontally oriented streets are aligned paralleled with the rising sun’s angle of incidence during the summer months. This ability to collectively organize the entirety of the city’s buildings along this specific astronomical grid system not only indicates the strong centralized authority expressed in the city, but also the intense integration of the sun into the cultural and religious values of the city. That is, the city’s conforming to the sun’s movements symbolizes the people of Teotihuacan’s subservience to the sun as well as their attempting as emulating it. This further serves to isolate the city’s respect for the sun and reiterate their holding of the sun as their primary source of worship. Moreover, this deference to the sun is expressed by not simply a temple, but rather the entirety of the city. This indicates that the respect for the sun is found not only in the nobility—those with the social privilege to commission a temple’s creation—but even amongst the lower classes of the society who still retain the ability to construct shops or residences. This demonstrates not only the personal relationship the citizens esteem for the sun, but symbolizes the collective identification with it—the notion that the land-owning citizens are aware of and reinforce their neighbor’s