Cempohuallan (CmpRG)

Who were the Cempohualteca? Were they from Cempohuallan on the Veracruz coast, or was their leader, “a Cempohualtecatl, a person of the Toltec kingdom of Tollan, something discussed by Miguel León-Portilla” as Stephanie Wood wonders in another entry in this Visual Lexicon? The present manuscript itself notes that the “ancient Toltecas” had influence in the region, but does not link them directly to the founding group of Cempohualteca. At this remove, and without more information, this conundrum cannot be cleared up. Turning to the tepetl, it has a typical bell-shaped profile and the expected black-bordered lines at its base, the upper one rendered in tan and curling in at each of its ends around the middle hot pink-colored one, which in turn sits on a shorter one of the same color. The surface of the hill, green at the top shading to tan on its lower reaches, has a quilted pattern that Barbara Mundy believes represents the scaly skin of the primordial earth monster, Tlaltecuhtli. A diagonal elongated tetl element adds the meaning rock or stone to the mix. It appears to act as a semantic indicator showing that the hill is rocky, but it is also a phonetic reminder that the term tepetl starts with -te.

Other elements on the hill are less easily explained, however. The three deer (mazatl) standing on its slopes and a rabbit (tochtli) stationed next to what appear to be reeds or tall grasses echo the Spanish text’s description of the fauna in the Cempoala region (“venados, conejos”). But the meaning of the three-ended tetl in a blue circular element on the lower right slope is not immediately clear (circular elements with blue-painted insides stand for water features elsewhere on the map). The nopal cactus standing above the bordered lines near the base has three birds associated with it: a hummingbird (huitzilin) feeding on a cactus flower; an owl perched on top of the cactus; a cotinga bird (xiuhtototl) with blue feathers on its back and wings, and purple on its chest. An apparent visual catalogue of local vegetation is seen below the tepetl, a line of plants that includes magueys, a nopal cacti, and what appears to be a native cherry-like tree (capolin, or “cerezo de la tierra” in the Spanish text).

It may be that some or all of these elements on or closely associated with the hill have deeper meanings. Rabbits were associated with the moon, fertility, pulque, and drunkenness. Yet being born on a day with the calendrical sign tochtli might be fortunate or not, depending on the number associated with it (among other things). Being born on a day with deer (mazatl) sign could be similarly fortunate or unfortunate. According to the Florentine Codex, various proverbs held that those who “no longer lived at home, who no longer obeyed his father, his mother…[who] just went wandering about somewhere” made themselves “into a rabbit…into a deer” (Anderson and Dibble, Book 6, “Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy,” 253). Horned owls (tecolotl) were considered to be harbingers of death or disaster, for instance. Brilliant blue cotinga feathers were used in crafting elite regalia, and of course hummingbirds were associated with the Mexica’s patron deity Huitzilopochtli, among other things. Still, as of this writing it is not possible to divine with any certainty what, if any, deeper meanings are being expressed by the fauna depicted on Cempohuallan’s place glyph. That said, the large, painstakingly detailed compound glyph for Cempoallan most obviously expresses—metaphorically and artistically—the town’s political legitimacy and domination of the surrounding territory. For more information about the map, see Biblioteca Digital Mexicana, A.C., http://bdmx.mx/documento/mapas-relaciones-geograficas-cempoala-epazoyuca... Mundy, Barbara E., “Mapping Babel: A Sixteenth-Century Indigenous Map from Mexico,” The Appendix, 1:4 (October 2013), and Mundy (1996), and Ballesteros García (2005), 55-56, for a somewhat different interpretation of some of the glyph's elements.