Tlecaxapan (CmpRG)

This hill or mountain may be the same one mentioned in the Relación’s Spanish language text as Tlecaxtitlan, one of the most important cerros in the area located near a water source or water feature. According to the alphabetic text, the name means “cerro echo a manera de brazero” (“a hill formed in a way [that looks] like a brazier;” folio 1 recto). The ending of the word written in the Spanish text, -titlan, is another way of saying “next to, with,” etc. Absent a second, similar feature painted on the map, it seems likely that this is the same hill or mountain that may have been known by more than one name, not an unprecedented occurrence (Stephanie Wood, personal communication, April 30, 2023). Since it is not associated closely with an image of a church (see the historical contextualizing image), and given the conventions of this placement on the map, the name is not that of an inhabited community. Diagonal “rocky” bands on the tepetl elements are found elsewhere on the map, such as on the compound glyph for Cempohuallan itself, and in the glyph for Xochitepec (see below). For more information about the 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), Mundy (1996), and Ballesteros García (2005), 63-64.