Tonatiuh

Tonatiuh (Classical Nahuatl: Tōnatiuh, 'He Who Goes Radiating Light' or 'The Movement Sun') is the supreme solar deity of the Nahua peoples presiding over the current cosmic world age, celebrated throughout Mexica (Aztec) cosmology as the era of the Fifth Sun (Nahui Ollin, '4-Movement'). According to the foundational theological narrative preserved in Book VII of the Florentine Codex and the Leyenda de los Soles, following the cataclysmic ruin of the four ancestral world suns, the assembled deities convened in primeval darkness at sacred Teotihuacan to designate who among them would leap into the blazing cosmic pyre (teotexcalli) to kindle a new sun in the heavens. While the opulent, arrogant deity Tecuciztecatl hesitated four times before the terrifying heat of the flames, the humble, pock-marked divinity Nanahuatzin—afflicted by weeping sores—cast himself stoically into the raging hearth, rising on the eastern horizon transformed into the dazzling solar disk of Tonatiuh. However, upon appearing in the eastern sky, the newly formed orb remained completely stationary and scorching, demanding the vital life force and blood sacrifice of the creator deities themselves before beginning his diurnal trek across the heavens. Within imperial Aztec theology, Tonatiuh was venerated as a divine celestial warrior engaged in perpetual conflict against nocturnal darkness and the star hosts (the Centzon Mimixcoa and Centzon Huitznahua); to empower his daily transit and forestall the prophesied cosmic collapse of the Fifth Sun by earthquakes, he required the life-giving nourishment of human blood (chalchihuatl) and sacrificial hearts. His likeness forms the iconic centerpiece of the world-famous Aztec Sun Stone (Piedra del Sol), where his face emerges from the glyph Nahui Ollin with eagle talons grasping human hearts and a tongue fashioned as an obsidian sacrificial blade.

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

Solar disk, Nahui Ollin glyph, eagle claws, obsidian-knife tongue

Primary sources

• Anonymous Nahua (indigenous sages and historians of Central Mexico), Leyenda de los Soles (Chimalpopoca Codex: The Creation of the Fifth Sun at Teotihuacan and the Sacrifice of the Gods). translation: Critical edition and direct translation from Nahuatl by Primo Feliciano Velázquez (UNAM). read
• Bernardino de Sahagún (Franciscan researcher), Florentine Codex (Book VII: The Heavenly Bodies, the sacrifice of Nanahuatzin and the Daytime Sun). translation: Bilingual annotated edition by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson (University of Utah Press). read
• Anonymous Mesoamerican (pre-Hispanic scribes and religious artists), Codex Borgia (Plate 71: The Striped Solar Disc and the Throne of Tonatiuh). translation: Academic facsimile and commentaries archived by Eduard Seler (Fondo de Cultura Económica). read
• Antonio de León y Gama (New Spanish astronomer and mathematician), Pioneering treatise of 1792 on the Stone of the Sun Monolith. translation: Historical edition of 1792 digitally archived at the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica. read

Studies

• Eduardo Matos Moctezuma (archaeologist, coordinator of the Templo Mayor Project), . INAH, México, 2012. open
• Alfonso Caso (anthropologist and pioneer of Mesoamerican studies), . Fondo de Cultura Económica, México, 1953. open
• Hartley Burr Alexander (researcher of pre-Columbian mythologies), . Marshall Jones Company, Boston (Archive.org), 1920. open
• Miguel León-Portilla (historian and emeritus scholar of Nahua philosophy), . Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, UNAM, 1956. open