Some Aztec places mentioned in Sister Stories Aztlan Aztlan was the mythical place of origin in some Aztec traditions, a lake with an island in the middle that was replicated when the wandering Mexica settled at Tenochtitlan. The word Aztec is derived from this mythical place. The name means Place of the Heron. Chapultepec Chapultepec is a hill that is preserved today in a park of the same name in modern Mexico City. The name means "Hill of the Grasshopper". It was the place that the Mexica settled when they entered the Valley of Mexico, according to their legends, before the earlier migrants to the valley evicted them. Chapultepec was a sacred place for the Aztecs. It continues to be important to modern Mexico as the location of the attack, commemorated on Cinco de Mayo, that dislodged the French colonial government from Mexico. Coatepec According to the legendary traditions of the Aztecs, the Mexica marked the end of the first Calendar Round of 52 years of wandering at a place called Coatepec, "Serpent Hill". As was the practice in Tenochtitlan, the ancestral Mexica carried out a New Fire ceremony to mark the end of one cycle of time and the beginning of another at this place. Because the 365-day solar calendar and the 260-day divination calendar take 52 years to reach their ends at the same moment, every day within a 52-year period had a unique date in the Aztec system. In some senses, then, restarting the calendars was re-initiating linear time, beginning history. Tenochtitlan Tenochtitlan was the capital of the Aztec polity, a city built on land reclaimed from the shallow waters of Lake Texcoco. According to legendary histories, the site was revealed to the Mexica by an omen, an eagle seated on a cactus. The sacred nature of the city was marked by the construction of a walled enclosure with shrines, a ballcourt, skull-rack, and as its most elaborated building, the Great Temple with its double shrines to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc. The secular part of the city was divided into four quarters, and when the Spanish first entered the city in 1519, probably housed about 200,000 people in an area of about 6.5 square miles. The city was united by a network of roads and canals, and causeways and aqueducts extended to the neighboring shoreline. In each quarter of the city there were public spaces marked by a temple and plaza where city administrators carried out their duties as judges and representatives of the city government. In turn, each quadrant was divided into neighborhoods sharing a common school and local temple, and provided with a local military officer. The significance of the place where the Mexica accomplished this second beginning of time was linked by the Aztecs to the significance of mythological Coatepec, where their patron god Huitzilopochtli was born, by their shared name. In turn, the use of Coatepec as a figurative name for the Great Temple in Tenochtitlan placed the ceremonies held there in the same creative setting as both the birth of the god and the rebirth of the calendar. Texcoco Texcoco was the major partner in the rise of Tenochtitlan, according to the traditional histories of the Aztec. The Texcocans are portrayed as purveying the highest values of civilization, exemplified by their poet-ruler, Nezahualcoyotl. When the Aztecs gained control of the dynasty of Texcoco, they controlled both the source of military power and of civilized values. Valley of Mexico The Valley of Mexico surrounds modern Mexico City. Volcanos rise around the valley, and their past eruptions sealed off the drainage that fed shallow, interconnected lakes. On the shores of these lakes, villages grew and it was here, in the southwest valley, that the city of Tenochtitlan was founded on islands. Other Aztec places in this work: Azcapotzalco - Culhuacan - Templo Mayor