Barbara_E._Mundy]_The_Death_of_Aztec_Tenochtitlan

waTeR and The sacRed ciTy • 31

1.1 and 2.4). Abundant freshwater springs flowed from the
base of the hill, and the hilltop site was easily defensible.
Its ideal nature is made clear by the glyph the artist of the
Tira used to show Chapultepec, which can be compared to
a similar glyph in the Codex Aubin, discussed in chapter 1
(see figure 1.7). It appears as a grasshopper (chapolin) on
top of the bell shape that was the symbol for tepetl, “hill.”
When combined with the glyph for “water” (atl), which
can be seen flowing out of the hill’s base, it also conveys
altepetl, the word used to designate the human collective
that was the primary group affiliation, after kin, of peoples
in central Mexico. The altepetl was more than just a group-
ing of people; additionally it was an ideal environment
within which people flourished. The Florentine Codex tells
us that mountains like those surrounding the valley “were

only like ollas (vessels) or like houses; that they were filled

with water .  . . and hence the people called their settle-

ments altepetl.” 16 Chapultepec thus figures in this account

as a kind of original paradise, an easily defensible site, a

mountain filled with water. The Mexica respite in this

ideal altepetl lasted twenty years. Like the representation

of the space of the island settlement, Aztlan, that begins

the Tira de la Peregrinación, an image that would provide

a template for what the Mexica would come to construct

in Tenochtitlan, so too would Chapultepec, this sacred

altepetl, serve as a conceptual model for other lived spaces.

The pacific idyll in the perfect altepetl of Chapultepec

came to a violent end when an enemy of Huitzilopochtli,

his nephew Copil, raised armies against the Mexica to

extract vengeance for Huitzilopochtli’s abandonment of

Copil’s mother, another female enemy, a sorceress named

Malinalxochitl. In the ensuing battle, Copil was captured

by the Mexica and met a gruesome end at the hill of

Tepetzinco, a rocky outcropping rising from Lake Tetz-

coco (see figure 1.1). As told by the Codex Chimalpahin, a

figuRe 2.4. Unknown creator, arrival at Chapultepec, Tira de
la Peregrinación, ca. 1530. Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e
Historia, Mexico. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional
de Antropología e Historia.