Tzontecomatepetl (CmpRG)

There is a three-quarters drawing of a church near the Tzontecomatepetl glyph, but it could just as well refer to Hueitepec, another figure at this point on the map that was definitely a village in the area (see the historical contextualizing image). If the church, an element that usually serves as a semantic indicator of “inhabited place” on this map, was intended to be shared between the places, then Tzontecomatepetl could have been some kind of hamlet or village. But it is more likely that it is a landscape feature that was well known enough to be depicted here. Victor Manuel Ballesteros García (2005, pg. 64) seems to agree with that interpretation, but reports that in more recent times locals referred to the name as being related to a human skull or hair. But once again there is no indication of that on the map so that this could well be a reinterpretation of the name made a long time after the Relación was created. If the semi-naturalistic depiction of the hill is accurate, this landscape feature may have been a well-known dormant or extinct volcanic cone near to the community of Hueitepec, a sujeto (dependent town) of one of the four Cempohuallan cabeceras (head towns), Tzacuala. For more information about the RG 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).