Antiquities of Mexico, Natural History Building - Aztec Calendar Stone

This photograph, from the 1910s, shows a replica of the Aztec Sun Stone, sometimes called the calendar stone, in the Natural History Building of the United States National Museum.

Aztec people made the Sun Stone in Tenochtitlan during the reign of Moctezuma II. Scholars think that Aztec priests sacrificed human beings on the stone in the Templo Mayor, as part of rituals intended to repay the gods for creation.

A colonial Bishop had the stone buried in the Plaza Mayor in the late 1500s, hoping to bury the memory of precolonial religion with it. Construction workers accidentally disinterred it in 1790. Scholars initially believed it to be a calendar. It was displayed on the side of the Metropolitan Cathedral until 1865, then transferred to the Monolith Gallery of the Archaeological Museum on Moneda Street.

Since 1964, it has been on display in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.

Interior view, United States National Museum archeology exhibits in the Natural History Building, now known as the National Museum of Natural History, featuring antiquities of Mexico, including a cast of the Aztec Calendar Stone.