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The Aztec altepetl: ‘water-mountain’

23rd Jul 2024

The Aztec {italicaltepetl}: ‘water-mountain’

The Aztec glyph for the altepetl of Tollan or Tula, Manuscript of Tovar

Scholars usually agree that the altepetl was, in Frances Berdan’s words, ‘the essential building block for political life in pre-Spanish central Mexico’. The word is most often translated simply as ‘city-state’. But it was far more than a simple territorial term. Unfortunately, as Xavier Nóguez writes, ‘a full understanding of the concept is elusive’... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

Its importance throughout ancient Mesoamerica is in no doubt. In the Basin of Mexico alone there were some 30-50 (pic 1), each having a population of 10,000-15,000 and covering an area of 70-100 square kilometres (Berdan & Smith 2021: xx; Smith 2008: 90) - ‘the entire landscape [was] divided up into these polities’. The altepetl formed the very focus of Aztec history - indeed, Aztec historical annals contained information ‘important to the polity as a whole, for these are the stories of the altepetl (community kingdom), rather than dynastic or personal histories’ (Hill Boone 2017: 124). However, as McDonough stresses, ‘an altepetl was more than a bound geographic area, jurisdiction or political entity. In Barbara Mundy’s words, an altepetl was “an ideal environment within which people flourished”’ (2024: 114) - and for the Mexica the ideal-typical model was that of the Toltec capital Tollan (more commonly known today as Tula) (García Garagarza 2017). So, exactly what WAS an altepetl? We’ll look first at what one consisted of and then at the important symbolism embodied in the word.

Drawing on the work of Smith (2008), Berdan & Smith (2021), Pohl & Lyons (2010), Noguez (2001), and Fargher, Blanton & Heredia Espinoza (2001), we can sum up its constituent parts as follows:-
• A legitimate king (tlatoani) or ruling dynasty, with control over local lands and labour
• Political autonomy (or a sense of such)
• A population of nobles and commoners subject to the king
• A capital city with a royal palace (tecpan in Nahuatl), as a ‘head town’ (cabecera in Spanish)
• A series of smaller settlements (towns, villages, isolated farmsteads) and accompanying farmland
• A patron deity complete with state temple and other religious buildings
• A market
• A well-establlshed founding legend often with mythological underpinnings
• The capital city divided into four quarters (each commonly called a calpolli, boasting its own name, local leader, military schools, patron deity or calpolteotl, temple and portion of city-state lands)
• An open and accessible but formal space, the plaza, where markets and state-wide rituals and festivals took place, bounded by the altepetl’s central temple and palace.

The scholar most associated with fully exploring and describing the concept of altepetl is James Lockhart, who defined it as a ‘state, regional ethnic state, city-state, sovereign sociopolitical entity’ (2001: 167). A ‘special, central concept’ to the Nahua, Lockhart notes that the Spanish word pueblo renders the concept better than the English ‘town’, since it should not imply merely an urban structure. Moreover, as Smith (2008: 91) stresses, these polities were defined ‘not by territory and boundaries but by relations of personal subjugation or allegiance’.
At this point we need to dissect the world altepetl (plural altepeme) itself. It is a classic case of a disfrasismo or couplet, the joining of two concrete nouns to create a third, larger, more abstract idea. In this case, the Nahuatl word combines atl meaning water and tepetl or mountain, to form... well something that ‘replicated the cosmic layout of the quadripartite horizon surrounded by water, with the Axial Mountain... at its centre’ (García Garagarza 2017: 596).

According to the eminent Mexican historian Alfredo López Austin, the concept of the altepetl ‘was related to a series of principles concerned with important agricultural cycles. Its glyph depicts a bell-shaped hill that contains in its interior a pool of water with the forces of germination distributed throughout the rain’ (quoted by Noguez 2001: 12). The patron god/goddess lived inside the mountain and acted as the community’s protector, guide (on pilgrimages for example), giver of water and fertile land. (S)he could of course also punish wayward individuals and communities. At the centre stood the main temple-pyramid, symbolising the very concept of altepetl and as such representing ‘the mountains filled with water... the heart of society’ (van Zantwijk 1985: 200). The greatest example of this, of course, was the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan (pic 4), which ‘reiterated Aztlan [pic 3], the original abode of the Aztecs, surrounded by water and crowned by the Mountain of the Ancestors, Colhuatepec. Mountains were seen as the living deposits of all earthly wealth and fertility’ (García Garagarza 2017: 596).

In this, the Mexica were continuing an ancient tradition, that of settling, historically, ‘where they had not only a hill from which to defend themselves but also a source of water’ (Townsend 2019: 40). Every altepetl had a neighbouring guardian (‘tutelary’) mountain (García Garagarza 2017: 597). This is confirmed in the Nahua text of the Florentine Codex: ‘And they said that the mountains were only magic places... like ollas [pots] or like houses; that they were filled with the water which was there... And hence the people called their settlements altepetl. They said, “This mountain of water, this river, springs from there, the womb of the mountain. For from there Chalchiuhtlicue sends it - offers it”’ (Book XI: 247). López Austin provides further understanding of this strong Mesoamerican association between water and sacred mountains: ‘The sources frequently mention that when a calpolli was formed, the guardian god went to live in a nearby mountain. In this way, independent of his position and attributes within the pantheon, he could send rain to his people if they maintained good relations with him through the cult’ (1988: 70).

It’s important to note that pilgrimages to sacred mountains are still very much a part of Nahua communities’ ritual life today (follow the link below to learn more): in northern Veracruz pilgrims regularly trek to the top of a guardian mountain, Postectli, to leave offerings to the Water Dweller deity (Sandstrom 2012). Not only water but spiritual power flowed from mountains to the altepetl: ‘The periphery of the altepetl... was constantly recentered during the frequent pilgrimages to the mountains and hills that characterised the religious life of the people’ (García Garagarza 2017: 598).
Whilst the political environment surrounding the existence of so many independent altepeme could be ‘volatile’ (Berdan & Smith 2012), they were formed and constituted, as Maffie (2014: 105) explains, on a non-hierarchical principle. Maffie quotes James Lockhart: ‘”The Nahua manner of creating larger constructs, whether in politics, society, economy or art, tended to place emphasis on a series of relatively equal, relatively separate and self-contained constituent parts of the whole, the unity of which consisted in the symmetrical numerical arrangement of the parts, their identical relationships to a common reference point, and their orderly, cyclical rotation”’.

Maffie goes on to write: ‘The altepetl consisted of four smaller neighbourhoods or calpultin (pl., calpulli sing.), arranged in this manner. Its four-part arrangement mirrored the four-petaled flower arrangement of the cosmos and aligned with the four cardinal directions (pic 7).
The most recent (2024) study of the altepetl is probably that of Kelly McDonough. In it she dissects an image from the Codex Cozcatzin (pic 8) to elucidate the main elements of the concept, the same linkage of water, land and governance that we saw earlier in the Codex Aubin glyph of Aztlan (pic 3).
’At the right-hand bottom corner of the folio we find the tepetl glyph covered with a pattern of dark green diamonds and small circle representing Tlaltecuhtli, the earth deity. At the base of the tepetl, water (atl) spills forth, graphically representing the term Nahuas used to describe who they were and where they come from: their altepetl.

‘Now, move clockwise to the left of the altepetl glyph to consider the tecpan (lordly house) decorated with white concentric circles above the doorway, signifying governance and authority. Both the altepetl and tecpan glyphs connect to a stream of water, leading to a larger body of water populated by plant life and other water beings. The top half of the folio is a depiction of rulership, in the form of Moteuczoma Xocoyotzin of Tenochtitlan (1502-1520), who is linked by a mecatl (rope, cord) signifying mecayotl, or lineage, to his daughter doña Isabel Moctezoma, and his son don Pedro Moctezoma Tlacahuepantli.
’Though not visually accounted for in this folio, it is the divine that stitches all these elements together; none exist without the gods, or are separate from them, for that matter. The entire folio is a representation of the dynamic assemblage of the altepetl of Tenochtitlan: water, land, those who ruled the altepetl, and those who dwelled within it.’ (2024: 114).
As a postscript, we should note that whilst the altepetl did survive post-invasion, today all that remains of it is ‘the continuing use of ancient place names and a few ancestral territorial boundaries...’ (Noguez, 2001: 13).

Sources/references:-
• Berdan, Frances F. & Smith, Michael E. (2021) Everyday Life in the Aztec World, C.U.P.
• Fargher, L. F., Blanton, R.E. and Heredia Espinoza, V.Y. (2017) ‘Aztec State-making, Politics and Empires’ in The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs, eds. Deborah L. Nichols & Enrique Rodriguez-Alegría, O.U.P.
• García Garagarza, León (2017) ‘The Aztec Ritual Landscape’ in The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs, op cit
• Hill Boone, Elizabeth (2017) ‘Aztec Pictography and Painted Histories’ in The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs, op cit
• Lockhart, James (2001) Nahuatl as Written, Nahuatl Studies Series no. 6, Stanford University Press
• López Austin, Alfredo (1988) The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas, vol. 1, University of Utah Press
• Maffie, James (2014) Aztec Philosophy, University Press of Colorado
• McDonough, Kelly S. (2024) Indigenous Science and Technology: Nahuas and the World Around Them, University of Arizona Press
• Noguez, Xavier (2001) ‘Altepetl’, in The Oxford Encylopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures, vol. 1, ed. David Carrasco, O.U.P.
• Pohl, John M. D. & Lyons, Claire L. (2010) The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire, J. Paul Getty Museum
• Sahagún, Fray Bernardino de (1963) Florentine Codex Book 11 - Earthly Things, trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson & Charles E. Dibble, School of American Research & University of Utah, Santa Fe, New Mexico
• Sandstrom, Alan (2012) ‘Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain: A Nahua Ritual for Abundant Crops’, online article, Mexicolore, London
• Smith, Michael E. (2008) Aztec City-State Capitals, University Press of Florida
• Townsend, Camilla (2019) Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, O.U.P.
• van Zantwijk, Rudolf (1985) The Aztec Arrangement, University of Oklahoma Press.

Picture sources:-
• Main: image scanned from Manuscrit Tovar, UNESCO/ADEVA, Graz, Austria, 1972
• Pix 1 & 3: photos by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Pic 2: image from Wikipedia (Altepetl)
• Pic 4: image scanned from Arquitectura Prehispánica by Ignacio Marquina, INAH/SEP, Mexico, 1951, p.197
• Pic 5: image scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition (Graz, Austria, 1979) of the Codex Vaticanus A
• Pic 6: photo by, courtesy of and © Alan Sandstrom
• Pic 7: illustration by Jorge Enciso, scanned from his Design Motifs of Ancient Mexico, Dover Publications Ltd., New York, 1953
• Pix 8 & 9: images scanned from Códice Cozcatzin, facsimile edition, INAH/Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico, 1994.