Pyramid of the Moon: Teotihuacan's Northern Sacred Monument

The Pyramid of the Moon stands at the northern end of the Avenue of the Dead in Teotihuacan, the great ancient city north-east of modern Mexico City. Built and rebuilt in seven stages between about AD 100 and AD 450, it was the city’s second-largest monument and a focus of state ritual. Excavations inside it revealed some of the most dramatic sacrificial offerings known from ancient Mexico.

Setting

Teotihuacan’s main axis, the Avenue of the Dead, runs for more than two kilometres through the city. The Pyramid of the Moon closes its northern end, set in front of the extinct volcano Cerro Gordo. Seen from the avenue, the pyramid’s outline echoes the mountain behind it, a deliberate design many scholars link to beliefs about sacred mountains and water.

In front of the pyramid lies the Plaza of the Moon, framed by smaller platforms. A massive stone statue of a female deity, often linked to water, was found near this plaza and is now displayed in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.

Seven building phases

Between 1998 and 2004, the Moon Pyramid Project, directed by Saburo Sugiyama and Rubén Cabrera Castro with support from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), tunnelled into the monument. They found that the visible pyramid encases six earlier buildings.

• Building 1, the earliest, was a modest platform from about AD 100.
• Each new version was built over and around the last, growing larger.
• Buildings 4 to 7 were major enlargements, the last reaching the present size of roughly 140–150 metres across at the base and some 43–45 metres high.

The final stage, Building 7, is usually dated to about AD 400–450. Its front has an attached stepped platform (an adosada) facing the plaza.

Offerings and sacrifice

The most striking finds were dedicatory burials placed as each new building began. They show that the enlargements were marked by elaborate state ceremonies.

• Burial 2 held a sacrificed man with his hands tied behind him, together with animals including pumas, a wolf, eagles and rattlesnakes, some apparently placed alive in cages.
• Burial 5 contained three seated individuals with fine jade ornaments in a style resembling Maya work, suggesting high-status people or contacts with the Maya region.
• Burial 6 contained about a dozen sacrificed individuals, most of them decapitated, along with many animals.

Obsidian blades, figurines, shell and greenstone objects accompanied these burials. The animals were symbols of military and political power, and researchers interpret the offerings as statements of the ruling elite’s authority.

How it was built

Like other Teotihuacan monuments, the pyramid has a core of earth, rubble and stone fill held in place by internal retaining walls. The outer faces were finished with cut stone and covered in lime plaster, which was probably painted. Very little of that bright surface survives today.

The builders used the city’s characteristic talud-tablero style, in which sloping panels (talud) alternate with vertical, framed panels (tablero). The style became a signature of Teotihuacan and was copied at sites as far away as the Maya lowlands, a sign of the city’s wide influence.

Rebuilding a sacred structure by enclosing the old one inside a new, larger shell was common in Mesoamerica. It preserved earlier phases almost intact, which is why the tunnels of 1998–2004 could reveal so much about the pyramid’s history.

Its place in the city plan

The Pyramid of the Moon was not an isolated monument. It anchored the northern end of a planned city laid out on a grid oriented about 15.5 degrees east of north. The Pyramid of the Sun stands to its south-east along the same avenue, and the Ciudadela with its Feathered Serpent temple lies further south.

Several elite residential and ritual complexes, including the Palace of Quetzalpapalotl with its carved pillars, stand close to the Plaza of the Moon. Their position suggests that the area was one of the most important ceremonial spaces in Teotihuacan.

Name and meaning

Teotihuacan was largely abandoned after about AD 550–650. When the Aztecs visited centuries later, they called the city “the place where the gods were created” and gave its monuments names such as “Moon” and “Sun”. These are later labels; the original names and dedications are not known.

Today the pyramid is part of the Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.

Myths and facts

Myth: The pyramid was a temple to a moon goddess. Fact: The name is Aztec. Its original deity is uncertain, though associations with water, fertility and the mountain behind it are often proposed.

Timeline

• c. AD 100: Building 1, the first platform, is built on the site.
• c. AD 200–350: Successive enlargements accompanied by dedicatory burials.
• c. AD 400–450: Building 7 gives the pyramid its final form.
• c. AD 550–650: Fire and decline in Teotihuacan’s civic-ceremonial core.
• 1987: Teotihuacan inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• 1998–2004: Moon Pyramid Project excavates the internal stages and burials.

Why it matters

The Pyramid of the Moon shows how Teotihuacan’s rulers turned architecture into a record of power, renewing a sacred monument again and again with offerings. Together with the larger Pyramid of the Sun and the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, it anchors the layout of one of the ancient world’s great cities.