page_title: Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora
section_title: Ideas about the ancient Mexicans
hierarchical_section_title: Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora / Ideas about the ancient Mexicans
caption_attribution_description: English: "Rare map of the area around Mexio City, centered on the large Lagune de Mexico and extends to include the surrounding mountains, rivers, towns and villages, reportedly derived from a copy an original native map while Careri was in Mexico. The map is drawn on a partial bird's-eye format, with an imaginary horizon that includes an erupting volcano at upper right. Many villages are located including Pachuca, Tacoma, Atlapilco, Tolodyuca, Tetlapanaloya, and Apazco. Careri's account states that the map is a copy of a map drawn by Charles Siguenza of an original drawn by native Americans. The Mexicans were told to search for a place that would be shown to them by the presence of an eagle standing on a cactus growing out of a rock. This place is Tenochtitlán or the present-day Mexico City. The present map is from an edition of Careri's account published in Paris. The work also appears in Churchill's collection of voyages and travels, published in London, 1704."
context_page_description: Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora was one of the first great intellectuals born in the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain. He was a criollo patriot, exalting New Spain over Old. A polymath and writer, he held many colonial government and academic positions.
context_section_description: Sigüenza's ideas about the ancient Mexicans were informed by the hugely valuable manuscripts from Alva Ixtlilxochitl, but he also developed ideas of his own about the origin of the Mexicans. He was one of the first persons, during Spanish rule, to dig around the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. He took Italian traveler Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri to that ancient site. Sigüenza's ideas about the origins of the ancient Mexicans were influenced by German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, who saw ancient Egypt as the source of all natural wisdom. Sigüenza embraced Kircher's ideas and in the publication accompanying his triumphal arch for the arrival of the new viceroy, Theater of Political Virtues That Constitute a Ruler, "he boldly pronounced that the Mexican Indians were the descendants of the Naphtuhim, the son of Misraim, founder and ruler of Egypt," and further asserted that Naphtuhim was a variation on the name Neptune, the ruler of Atlantis, populated by Egyptian colonists. In advocating an Egyptian origin for the ancient Mexicans, he rejects Franciscan fray Juan de Torquemada's dismissal of that theory. Sigüenza, also as opposed to Torquemada, believed that St Thomas the Apostle evangelized Mexico and identified him with Quetzalcoatl. He gave notice that a pamphlet entitled Phoenix of the West. St Thomas found with the name of Quetzalcoatl would be published, but whether he wrote it or not is unclear, since many of Sigüenza's works remain in title only.
caption: Map of Mexico and the central lake system by Italian traveler Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri from one by Sigüenza y Góngora.
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