30 May 2025 / 10 House
Article suitable for Top Juniors and above
Find out moreMexica maps
Mexica/Aztec map Codex Xolotl
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Radek Koncewicz: Obviously there are plenty of maps showing the Aztec empire, but did the Mexica themselves ever use maps? They had plenty of Amatl works and a large empire that needed to be traversed on foot, were maps something they came to use as well? (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
Yes, they did use maps. The sad thing is that none of the pre-Columbian ones have survived. Even so, the evidence for them is very strong: after all, the Spanish conquerors themselves admitted using local native maps on their journeys of conquest extending from Mexico - and Moctezuma was reported tracking the location of Hernán Cortés and his men via a series of painted maps drawn by his spies/ambassadors. Indeed, when Cortés asked Moctezuma for information on ports along the Gulf Coast, Moctezuma gave him a map showing the location of all the coastal rivers and coves...
You’re right - controlling and administering an empire as large as the Aztec one would have been well nigh impossible without maps of some kind. Maps of course were just one of several different kinds of Mexica ‘books’, that included (ruling) family histories, calendars, day/year ‘books of fate’ and tribute lists.
Mind you, their maps were designed very differently to our modern maps; the Aztecs went for clarity, orderliness and (often cosmic) relationships, so there was no attempt to present perspective, nor natural appearance. Here we show one of the maps drawn by local scribes AFTER the Conquest - the Codex Xolotl - and it’s clearly based on ancient styles and principles. Towns and natural features (lakes, rivers, mountains...) are all correctly positioned, but old ideas are very much still present. Glyphs are used to ‘name’ places and important individuals are added. East is shown at the top (for the direction of sunrise) and West at the bottom, pointing towards the earth that ‘swallows’ the Sun every evening...
After the Conquest, the Spanish recruited native scribes to map out their newly conquered territories and boundaries, knowing that the locals possessed the necessary skills, conventions (such as glyphs to show place names) and familiarity with the landscape and terrain to do so accurately.
For an idea of the complexity and multiple layers/meanings of pre-Columbian ‘maps’, see the Ask Us entry on the title page of the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (follow link below...)
Info from:-
• Aztec Art by Esther Pasztory (Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1983)
• Painting the Conquest by Serge Gruzinski (Flammarion, Paris, 1992)
Image sources
• Images from the Codex Xolotl from www.amoxcalli.org.mx
• Image from the Florentine Codex scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994
Comments (3)
Kent Smith
11th Feb 2025
What was the Gulf of Mexico called, and was there a glyph for the name?
Mexicolore
The Mexica-Aztec worldview conceived of the world as being a great creature floating on and surrounded by water. They called their world Cemanahuac meaning something like ‘Surrounded by Water’. Most people agree that they didn’t have specific terms for the Pacific or Atlantic oceans, nor for the Gulf of Mexico. They had a general term for ‘sea’, ilhuicaatl, meaning roughly ‘Sky Water’.
R. Castro
20th Feb 2017
Hello, I’m wondering if there is a way to obtain a copy of one or several of the maps? I’d like to use it/them in a book to depict the Aztec Empire. Thanks!
Mexicolore
As you can see, we obtained the images shown from the Mexican website amoxcalli.org.mx. We can only suggest you approach them...
tecpaocelotl
31st Dec 2010
Great article.
Another map to look into is la mapa de Cuauhtinchan.
Mexica/Aztec map Codex Xolotl
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