Archeologists say discovery may be tomb of Aztec ruler

Accounts written by Spanish priests suggest the area was used by the Aztecs to cremate and bury their rulers. But no tomb of an Aztec ruler has ever been found, in part because the Spanish conquerors built their own city atop the Aztec's ceremonial center, leaving behind colonial structures too historically valuable to remove for excavations.

One colonial building was so damaged in a 1985 earthquake that it had to be torn down, giving specialists their first chance to examine the site off Mexico City's Zocalo plaza, between the Metropolitan Cathedral and the ruins of the Templo Mayor pyramid.

Archeologists say they have located what appears to be a 6-by-6-foot entryway into the tomb about 15 feet below ground. The passage is filled with water, rocks, and mud, forcing workers to dig delicately while suspended from slings. Pumps work to keep the water level down.

"We are doing it very, very slowly . . . because the responsibility is very great and we want to register everything," said Leonardo López Luján, the lead government archeologist on the project. "It's a totally new situation for us, and we don't know exactly what it will be like down there."

As early as this fall, they hope to enter the inner chambers -- a damp, low-ceilinged space -- and discover the ashes of Ahuizotl, who was probably cremated on a funeral pyre in 1502.

By that time, Columbus had already landed in the New World. But the Aztecs' first contact with Europeans came 17 years later, in 1519, when Hernán Cortés and his band of conquistadors marched into the Mexico Valley and took hostage Ahuizotl's successor, his nephew Montezuma.

Ahuizotl's son Cuauhtémoc (kwow-TAY-mock) took over from Montezuma and led the last resistance to the Spaniards in the battle for Mexico City in 1521. He was later taken prisoner and killed. Like Montezuma, his burial place is unknown.

Because no Aztec royal tomb has ever been found, the archeologists are digging into the unknown. Radar indicates the tomb has up to four chambers, and scientists think they will find a constellation of elaborate offerings to the gods on the floor.