Tzapotla (CmpRG)

This iconographic element for Tzapotlan stands within a narrow, red-bordered rectangle. These boxes, found all over the map, are elements that Barbara E. Mundy regards as marking off divisions between territories held by Cempoala’s subject communities. Below it is a drawing of a European-style church with a small bell tower topped by a cross. The pairing of a glyphic element with a church is commonly found on the map. The churches seem to function as semantic elements emphasizing that “this is an inhabited place” rather than only some kind of natural feature in the landscape. Indeed, the Spanish text of the Relación emphasizes that all of Cempoala’s dependent communities have churches. The name of Tzapotlan is also signaled by an alphabetic gloss which does include the locative that is not rendered in the iconographic zapote tree element (see the historical contextualizing image and gloss). For more information about this 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 The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaciones Geográficas (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), particularly pg. 129 and her discussion of the function of the red lines seen on the map.