chantli (CmpRG)

The circles just below the roof are a common element on regal structures, suggesting power and prestige, and underlining the building’s status as something much more important than a simple calli (house). The palace depicted on the Relación is glossed as being “the home of Itzcohuatzin, ruler of Mexico” (see gloss). Because of these royal associations, we feel justified in suggesting that it is also tecpan or tecpancalli. Elsewhere, such structures can also identified with terms such as huei tecpancalli, and less commonly as tecpanchan. While the image of the palace is enough to establish that building’ status, Barbara Mundy has observed that the gloss “shows how a picture…triggered historical associations on the part of the map’s viewer,” but that the precise nature of that association was “set down in alphabetic writing (see citation, below).” The Spanish-language text of the Relación adds a little more information on the subject, noting in section 14 (fol. 1v) that “when Itzcohuatzin [ruled 1427-1440] was lord in Mexico the pueblos of Zempoala, Tlaquilpan, and Tecpilpan passed into the dominion of Mexico.” Whether or not a building (or remnants of it) associated with the Mexica ruler was still standing in Cempoala around 1580, or the artist who created the iconographic image for the map was merely conveying a bit of information deemed to be historically significant in the life of region, is not clear. For more information about the Relación, see Mundy, Barbara E., “Mapping Babel: A Sixteenth-Century Indigenous Map from Mexico,” The Appendix, 1:4 (October 2013), and the same author’s book, The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaciones Geográficas (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 175 (quote, above).