Ometepec (CmpRG)

The iconograph for Ometepec is superimposed on a larger natural feature shaded in lighter green, part of which is glossed as (Hu)itznavac (Huitznahuac; the first two letters are lost in what may be a latter repair that joined or rejoined together two of the sheets of the paper used for the map; see historical contextualizing image). Unfortunately, the alphabetic text of the Relación Geográfica de Cempoala does not include an answer to item 18, which requests information about such things as “alguna sierra o cordillera” (some mountain or mountain range) in the region, but it does state in the response to item 16 that there are some “cerros no muy altos” (hills that are not very high) in the area without, however, naming Ometepec or Huitznahuac. Both of these elevations also are featured as being near one another on a 1590 pictorial created during an investigation of a request for a land grant in the area (see other entries for both in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Glyphs). For a study of the RG, see Mundy, Barbara E., “Mapping Babel: A Sixteenth-Century Indigenous Map from Mexico,” The Appendix, 1:4 (October 2013), https://theappendix.net/issues/2013/10/mapping-babel-a-sixteenth-century..., Mundy (1996), and Ballesteros García (2005), 65, figure 34.