archaeography

Teotihuacan has never been no longer. Its sheer matter defies oblivion. Yet despite several pre-Hispanic textual references to the already-archaeological ruin, the extensive cosmopolis (covering 20 square kilometers) seems to have escaped visualization until 1560, when the so called ‘Mazapan Map’, a copy from a lost original, formed part of 16th century Spanish records of farmlands and land ownership in New Spain.

The ruins of Teotihuacan cover the bottom portion of the ‘map’: the Pyramid of the Moon is at bottom left, with the avenida, paralleling the map’s edge, extending past the Pyramid of the Sun (bottom center) to the large, open rectangular shape of the ciudadela at the bottom right. Nahuatl glyphs, the pictographic-ideographic language of the Aztecs, give place names and identify personages as landowners. The glyph next to the upside down, stepped image of the Pyramid of the Sun (bottom center), does not identify it as the “tower or hill of the sun” (whereas a glyph next to the stepped image at the lower left identifies it as the “tower or hill of the moon” [ytzacual metzli]), but rather indicates that the monument serves as the boundary of agricultural fields. Similarly, the ciudadela is identified as the “place of burials in honor of the sun” [tonali itlaltiloyan], possibly indicating an awareness of the mass, dedicatory burials beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. The large personage in the center of the ciudadela (lower right) is labeled as the current landowner of the area encompassing the ciudadela, and possibly the majority of the site in 1560.