Nezahualcoyotl Dies in Texcoco

1464

The philosopher-king of Texcoco, the Aztec Triple Alliance's cultivated second city, died after a remarkable reign of forty years. A poet who composed skeptical verses questioning whether the gods truly existed, an engineer who designed the great dike protecting Tenochtitlan from catastrophic floods, and a lawgiver who codified eighty statutes of criminal and civil justice, Nezahualcoyotl was Mesoamerica's closest equivalent to a Renaissance prince and its most celebrated intellectual ruler.