Some of the vignettes in the Egyptian Book of the Dead depict the “heron of plenty,” otherwise known as the phoenix, perched on a small pyramid. An oasis called the Faiyum southwest of Giza was probably the naturalistic origin of this concept. Similar to the Greek Elysian Fields, the ancient Egyptian afterlife was called the Field of Reeds. Uros island made of reeds near Lake Titicaca. North and South America are not the only places where the reed gained cultural significance.įigure 3. Totora was also used by the people of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) for thatching and to make swimming floats. This quintessential reed culture lives in reed houses, sails on reed boats, and weaves reed handicrafts. As the bottom of the islands rot away, they add more reeds to the top. The Uros still reside on floating islands made of totora reeds. Some archaeologists estimate this grand city to be an astounding 15,000 to 20,000 years old. In Peru, the pre-Incan Uros people living around Lake Titicaca claim to be descendants of the builders of the Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco). Maya cities with this same identification include Uxmal, Copan, Tikal, and Utatlán. Later the name was applied to the major Toltec center of Teotihuacán. The late Linda Schele, expert on Mayan iconography, speculates that the original “place of the reeds” was the Gulf Coast swamps of the Olmec heartland, where civilization, writing, the arts, and organized warfare for this whole region began. Atlantes (Toltec warrior statues) at Tula, Hidalgo, known as “place of the reeds.” Its name again means the “place of the reeds.”įigure 2. Quetzalcoatl), founded the city of Tula, or Tollan. The apotheosized chieftain of the Toltecs of northern Mexico was called Mixcoatl, or “Cloud Serpent.” About 900 AD his son, who was named Ce Acatl Topiltzin (a.k.a. Sadly for the Aztec leader Moctezuma of Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City), the latter occurred. This year marked the end of a fifty-two year cycle when the world would either be renewed or destroyed. Cortés and his conquistadores arrived on the Atlantic coast on Easter 1519, which was the Aztec year Ce Acatl, or One Reed. The ancestral home of the Aztecs was known not only as “place of the herons” but also the “place of the reeds.” The Aztecs initially assumed that Hernando Cortés was the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl making his prophesied return. Mesoamerica also has a number of locations designated by the reed. She wears this blanket at the naming of her first child. Hopi bride carries a reed mat that contains her wedding blanket. In fact, the Hopi word for the Milky Way is songwuka, literally “the big reed.”įigure 1. In addition, this clan is associated with the celestial “Heart of the Sky” god named Sótuknang. The first village settled on the Hopi Mesas was called Songòopavi (Shongopovi), literally “place of the reeds,” and the tribe still has a Reed Clan. In a ceremonial context, the Hopi use smaller reeds to make a storage case for a woman’s wedding robe woven of white cotton that will be buried with her after her death. In an alternate version of the legend, the Hopi escaped the deluge by sailing eastward on reed boats across the Pacific Ocean to dry land. (A kiva is a subterranean, communal prayer-chamber.) This happened at an actual location called the Sipapuni in the bottom of Grand Canyon. The few virtuous Hopis who still followed the ways of the Creator escaped the rising waters by crawling up through a bamboo reed that pierced the sky and stuck up into the next world like a kiva ladder. Legends of the Hopi tribe in Arizona, for instance, tell of the previous world-age that was decimated by a great flood, mythological variations of which exist in most cultures across the globe. Many cultures around the world either place a special importance on the hollow-stemmed reed plant or recognize a certain “place of the reeds” within their territory.
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