Montezuma II watching a comet, taken from the Codex Duran. For several days in 1519, a comet hung over the capital city of Tenochtitlan. It was described as "a rip in the sky which bleeds celestial influences dropwise onto the Aztec world." After that, a thunderbolt struck and burned down the temple of the deity Huitilopchitli. Nezahualpilli, ruler of Texcoco, told Moctezuma II that the Texcocan wise men had foretold foreign dominion over the Valley of Mexico. Diego Dur?n (1537-1588) was a Dominican friar best known for his authorship of one of the earliest Western books on the history and culture of the Aztecs, The History of the Indies of New Spain, a book that was much criticized in his lifetime for helping the "heathen" maintain their culture. It contains seventy-eight chapters spanning from the Aztec creation story until after Spanish conquest of Mexico, and includes a chronology of Aztec kings.
