Aztec Templo Mayor [Hardcover]

Antonio Serrato-Combe (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: University of Utah Press (December 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874806909
• ISBN-13: 978-0874806908
• Product Dimensions: 12.3 x 9.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,212,910 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great visual history book, January 24, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Aztec Templo Mayor (Hardcover)

If you have ever been interested in ancient civilizations, and have wondered where/how they lived... this book is for you. The pictures in this book are fabulous and bring you into the lives of this ancient civilization.
I would recommend this for anyone both for it's visual beauty and historical content!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Insight on the Building's Layout, March 3, 2004

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Aztec Templo Mayor (Hardcover)

reading from the author all the illustrations are computer generated based on oral and verbal manuscripts and on the actual foundations left behind...

i found the plaza's and home layouts to be of great interest... also his recreation of the ball court is good...

author also touches on the design of the temples... based on what manuscripts we have and the surviving structures...

the chapter on the templo mayor was great... but was hoping it could of been more detailed... author leaves alot of room for possibilities

definitely worth the purchase... if interested in the design of possible configurations of our capital

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars informative and gorgeous, June 5, 2008

By 

Ron Braithwaite "Hummingbird God" (El Indio, Texas United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Aztec Templo Mayor (Hardcover)

I used this book as one of the historical references for my novels, "Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God" which tell the complete story of the Conquest of the Mexica. The author's research has produced magnificent artwork of long-destroyed Mexican pyramids, temples and other structures in and around the Templo Mayor. The artwork looks and is modern and I suspect that the actual structures, although wonderful, weren't quite as scenic. Weathering and aging would be factors.

Also, a time-traveller to Tenochtitlan would have noticed things impossible to capture on paper. When the wind shifted there would have been the odors of blood, dismembered corpses and dissolution--mixed, no doubt, with the scent of the numerous flowers growing within and immediately outside of the temple precinct.

Also, I noticed a slight disagreement with the description provided by the old conquistador, Bernal Diaz del Castillo. Castillo noted the presence of two temples on the flat top of the precinct's primary pyramid. Serrato-Combe's work agrees with this. One of these temples was to Tlaloc. Again Serrato-Combe and Diaz are in agreement. The second temple, according to Diaz, had effigies of both Huitzilopotchli and Tezcatlipoca. Serrato-Combe indicates that this was specifically the temple of Huitzilopotchtli. I suspect S-C is right and that Diaz' recollection of events many years earlier may have been muddled. Nevertheless, in my novels I go along with Diaz' descriptions, primarily because his descriptions are so graphic and were, no doubt, partly the products of the terror that any European would have felt when examining these blood-soaked but magnificent structures.

RB