Mapping A Civilization

At first glance few pictures can be further removed from ‘the truth’ than the frontispiece to the manuscript known as the Fejervary Screenfold, one of the few Aztec manuscripts to have survived the destruction that followed the capture of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) by Cortes in 1521. Yet the frontispiece, which was originally owned and probably created by priests of Toltec faith, maps the empire and civilization of the Aztecs.

It is divided into four segments or lobes, with intervening diagonals radiating from a centre in which stands the fire god Xiuhtecutli. Flanking a tree in each of the segments are the remaining eight Aztec gods who, with the fire god, represent nine of the thirteen moons into which the Aztec year of 260 days was divided.

The four sets of smaller symbols or glyphs placed one above the other in some of the intersections represent the 20 days of each moon, which collectively correspond to the span of a human pregnancy. In the intersections are symbols culminating at the top in stylized maize, a reference to the Aztec belief that man was created in the image of maize. The circles on the birds flying above the maize symbolizes years. The picture therefore represents the Aztecs’ framework of time and belief.

At the same time the map depicts their surroundings. The four segments may represent the four sections into which Tenochtitlan was divided. They certainly represent the four provinces which the Aztecs divided their empire, each surrounded by its own sacred river and dominated by its particular gods, with east at the top and the physical geography distorted to fit within the pattern.

Most of the earliest, maps are now believed to be spiritual representations, or ‘fossilized prayers’, like the Fejervary Screenfold and the more familiar thirteenth century European world maps, such as the Hereford Mappamundi and the Psalter map.  In all of them physical geography is more or less distorted in order to accommodate the map’s principle purpose; to provide a framework within which the creators’ view of human existence, faith, history and knowledge can be expressed in pictures.

The world is variously shown as dominated or held by, or even as the body of, God or the gods. There are allusions, particularly in the Hereford Mappamundi which is surmounted by an illustration of the Last Judgement, to the passage of time and the transience of human existence. If the Aztec world is centred on Tenochtitlan, after AD 1100 the Christian world is increasingly shown as being centred on Jerusalem.

To this day, adherents of a variety of religions and sects feel the urge to ‘map’ their beliefs and world views.