mouths and were to keep clean and wash if they wanted their husbands to continue to love them. Most Aztec women did not wear make-up but some women accompanied warriors and these wore a yellow ochre and died their teeth red. Aztec women decorated themselves with jewelry including shell, clay, precious metals, and feathers. The ideal Aztec woman was not too thin and young women were told not to have early babies because of what it would do to their figures! Aztec women were supposed to be modest in their sexual conduct though there were prostitutes within the culture. Female adultery was punishable by death.The Aztecs loved flowers and 'Flowers-and-song' was their name for poetry, art and symbolism. Some of their poetry is emotionally very expressive and one of their preoccupations was how transitory and impermanent life is-perhaps just like a dream or a flower that blossoms to fade.Judging by aspects of their art the Aztecs were, as many cultures have been, very ambivalent in their views of women. There is a ten-foot diameter circular sculpture from the temple of Huitzilopochtli in Tenochtitlan that illustrates this. It depicts the body of a naked woman (Coyolxauhqui) that has been dismembered. This was the sister of Huitzilopochtli who, with her sons, planned to kill him when he was born. He emerged from the womb of his mother full sized and armed for war. He chased away his nephews and decapitated his sister. This mythic story graphically represents sibling rivalry, warnings to the enemies of the Aztecs what will happen to them, and the attractive and frightening power of women.Coaticlue is the name of the serpent-skirted mother of the war-god. A statue shows her with twin rattlesnake heads and a necklace of human hands and hearts. She could transform herself into a beautiful woman that would then lead men to their deaths. Many goddesses of ancient people were associated with beauty, sexuality and war. Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of ...
