Barbara_E._Mundy]_The_Death_of_Aztec_Tenochtitlan

50 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy

the pages of a book. Instead, these events were more often
commemorated (and thus remembered) within the collec-
tive sphere in the most pedestrian of registers, the spoken
place-name. The tales of Mexica migration began as oral
ones, and they (as we know them from their later writ-
ten forms) are quite concrete in setting the history in very
specific and well-known places, like Chapultepec or the
island outcropping of Tepetzinco or the place known as
Tlacocomulco within the larger island of Tenochtitlan. 71
Sometimes names conveyed specific events: through the
colonial period, a small atoll off Tepetzinco was called Aco-
pilco, “place of Copil,” to mark the place where the heart
of this enemy of Huitzilopochtli was tossed. Coatepec, as
seen above, was the place of Huitzilopochtli’s violent birth,
and the Templo Mayor, with its wide serpent balustrades,

was also represented (and perhaps was even named as)

Coatepec. These examples introduce us to a wider Mexica

practice of annealing the known world together to its past

through proper nouns, inscribing history on particular

(and real) spaces, none of which lay more than two miles

from the center of Tenochtitlan. Thus the landscape in and

around the city functioned as a mnemonic for this sacred

history of the defeat of Copil/Chalchiuhtlicue, invoking

its memory in a broader and more persistent way than the

singular image carved on the Teocalli.

concLusion

In the works discussed above, from folio 2r of the Codex

Mendoza to the Teocalli of Sacred Warfare, we have seen

how Mexica artists were intent on providing small, orga-

nized models that reflected both the cosmic template as

well as the specifics of Tenochtitlan’s extraordinary land-

scape, particularly its hydrographic profile. This drive to

use sculpture and architecture to model the surround-

ing world included the Templo Mayor, which served as a

figuRe 2.18. Unknown creator, map whose features still retain traces of
the crocodilian skin of the earth deity in the hill symbols and the animate
nature of water in the river, from Zolipa, Misantla, Veracruz, 1573.
Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico, Tierras 2672, 2nd pte., exp. 18,
fol. 13. Mapoteca 1535.