Translation of Tzompantli

[John B. Carlson]

At 12:20 AM +0100 1/13/05, Raul macuil martinez wrote:
>Saludos...
>
>  Yo soy de Tlaxcala y efectivamente mucha gente que lleva por último
>apellido el de Tzompantzi, principalmente el municipio que se llama Santa
>Ana Chiauhtempan y en el poblado llamado Contla de Juan Cuamatzi. Pero mi
>pregunta es la siguiente:
>
>A que se refieren exactamente al decir : Wonder what these guys did
>for a living...  One man in Tlaxcala was running for a local
>municipal election. Would you vote for a Tzompantzin?.
>
>Podrían ser un poco más especifícos?.
>
>  Miec tlaçocamati.
>


Raul, and anyone else,

I am sorry if this was misunderstood. This was 
simply my sense of humor kicking in. There have 
been local politicians named Tzompantzi running 
for office there in Tlaxcala, and having someone 
like the "Keeper of the Skullrack" as your local 
Alcalde or whatever might be a bit daunting. 
Monsieur le Guillotine?  Heads will roll... 
But in some sense, I do have a serious question 
here. In pre-Hispanic times, if someone had the 
TITLE of Tzompantzin, what would have been his 
function? Would he have been the official or 
priest who was in charge of the tzompantli? There 
would be a lot to know about who constructed 
these things... maintained them... put the heads 
on them... etc. I was both wondering about some 
of those details AND asking about the origin of 
the name Tzompantzi. And yes, I agree, I have 
seen the family name around west and northwest 
side of the Malintzi in Tlaxcala.

Any ideas about the etymology of this apellido?

John
--
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John B. Carlson, Ph.D., Director
The Center for Archaeoastronomy
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