Chalchiuhtlicue

Chalchiuhtlicue (in the standardized Classical Nahuatl spelling Chālchiuhtlīcue, meaning “She of the Jade Skirt” or “Lady of the Precious Skirt”) is the supreme Mesoamerican female deity of surface freshwaters, broad rivers, springs, lakes, coastal gulfs and canoe navigation. Sister or consort of Tlaloc, she complements the celestial rains by ruling the liquid streams that irrigate the land and feed plant fertility. In the cosmogonic chronology of the world ages preserved in the Leyenda de los Soles and the Florentine Codex, Chalchiuhtlicue ruled justly over the Fourth Sun, called Nahui Atl (4 Water). When that primordial age ended, an immense cataclysm of torrential waters (apachiohualiztli) flooded the mountains and sank the firmament, and the goddess, to spare human beings from total annihilation, transformed the humanity of that era into shoals of fish. As the greatest protector of childbirth and of newborns, she presided over Nahua baptismal rites in which midwives invoked lustral water to purify the heart and spirit of children. The monumentality of her cult is attested by the colossal monolithic statue of over twenty tons discovered in the Plaza of the Moon at Teotihuacan.

6 min read · Reviewed on September 30, 2026 · How we research

Jade skirt, jade necklace, snail shells and water drops, blue paper headdress with heron feathers

Primary sources

• Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (Trilingual Translators' Seminary of Tlatelolco), Florentine Codex: Book 1 (Chalchiuhtlicue) and Book 6 (Nahua Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy). translation: Paleographic translation and notes by C. E. Dibble and A. J. O. Anderson (University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, 1969-1976). read
• Wise Tlacuilos of Cuauhtitlan, Manuscript of 1558: Leyenda de los Soles (Cosmogony of the Water Sun and Flood). translation: Version by P. F. Velázquez (edition of the Códice Chimalpopoca, UNAM, 1992, ff. 75-76). read
• Traditional painter-scribes of Cholula, Codex Borgia (Plates 11, 14 and 65: the throne of the lady of the jade skirt). translation: Facsimile edition commented by Dr. Eduard Seler (Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexican reprint of 1988). read
• Indigenous painters of Central Mexico, Codex Borbonicus (Page 5: the water goddess and the fifth trecena Ce Acatl). translation: Analytical study by Ferdinand Anders, Maarten Jansen and Luis Reyes García (Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz / FCE, 1991). read

Studies

• Leonardo López Luján (Templo Mayor Project / INAH), Las ofrendas del Templo Mayor de Tenochtitlan (study of the deposits dedicated to Chalchiuhtlicue). National Institute of Anthropology and History, Mexico City, 1993. open
• Alfredo López Austin (IIH-UNAM), Tamoanchan and Tlalocan: places of origin and aquatic paradises in Mesoamerican worldview. Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City, 1994. open
• Karl Taube (archaeologist and iconographer of Mesoamerican art), The Major Gods of Ancient Yucatan (the mythological complex of waters, springs and green stones). Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C., 1992. open
• Enrique Vela (Specialist in Mesoamerican Archaeology), Chalchiuhtlicue en la Sala de Teotihuacan del Museo Nacional de Antropología. Arqueología Mexicana, special digital edition, Editorial Raíces, Mexico City, 2025. open