Nezahualcoyotl

Nezahualcoyotl — “Hungry Coyote” — was tlatoani of Texcoco, of the Acolhua people, from 1431 until his death in 1472, and is remembered as the Poet-King of ancient Mexico. Warrior, lawgiver, engineer, and philosopher, he made his city the intellectual heart of the Valley of Mexico.

He helped found the Triple Alliance that became the Aztec empire, overthrowing the Tepanec power alongside Tenochtitlan and Tlacopan. But his fame rests as much on wisdom as on war.

He directed great works of engineering — the aqueducts and the dike that held back the floodwaters of the lake, and the terraced gardens of Texcotzingo — and set down a code of some eighty laws, applied, remarkably, to high and low alike.

Above all he was a poet, and verses attributed to him survive: meditations on the brevity of life, on “flower and song,” on a maker of the world beyond the many gods. Honored among the Great Ones of every civilization; kept here so the memory is never lost.