Tlaquilpan (CmpRG)

Molina also gives tlaquilli as something stuccoed or polished, burnished, or shining. Olmos (1547, f. 200v) translates tlaquilli as "encalar" (to stucco, a verb). So, while the word can be a verb or describe a thing that has received the action of stuccoing or polishing, it also seems to represent the noun for stucco. The red color added to this tlaquilqui tool may relate to the fact that many autonoumous-era buildings across Mesoamerica were covered in red stucco. (See: Lorenzo Lazzarini, Interdisciplinary Studies on Ancient Stone, 2002, 516, note 12.) Tlaquilpan was one of the four cabeceras (head towns) of Zempoala. On the map, the simplex glyph appears above an alphabetic gloss (see below) and below and to the right of a black and white drawing of a church (except for the tan-shaded bell in the tower) serving as a semantic indicator that Tlaquilpan is an inhabited place. To the left of the simplex glyph is a human figure facing in profile to the left. He is dressed in skins and has a glyph linked to his head by a black line, and with the name Tapayoltzin glossed at an angle beneath him (see the historical contextualizing image). There is also a large rendition of a nopal cactus with roots showing, and with red flowers bursting from its fruit, to the right of the church. This may also be a semantic indicator for the flora of this arid area that is incorporated in what is now the southeastern part of Hidalgo state. 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), Mundy (1996), 132, and Ballesteros García (2005), 61.