Yesterday, a team of specialists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico, led by the historians Baltazar Brito Guadarrama and María Castañeda de la Paz, the philologist Michel Oudijk, and the Nahuatl specialist Rafael Tena, presented to the public the discovery of three new Aztec codices, collectively known as the Codices of San Andrés Tetepilco, formerly a part of the Culhuacan polity of Central Mexico, and nowadays located within the Iztapalapa borough in Mexico City. This is one of the most exciting and spectacular discoveries regarding codical sources in recent years, and is no doubt closely related to the topic of this blog. The discovery has been already covered by the Mexican press and explained in detail in yesterday’s presentation at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, which can be seen in Youtube. However, an English summary will be presented for the readers of this blog.
The newly discovered corpus was acquired by the Mexican government from a local family that wants to remain anonymous, but which were not collectors but rather traditional stewards of the cultural legacy of Culhuacan and Iztapalapa, and it is now stored at the library of the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico. It comprises three codices. The first is called Map of the Founding of Tetepilco, and is a pictographic map which contains information regarding the foundation of San Andrés Tetepilco, as well as lists of toponyms to be found within Culhuacan, Tetepilco, Tepanohuayan, Cohuatlinchan, Xaltocan and Azcapotzalco. The second, the Inventory of the Church of San Andrés Tetepilco, is unique, as Oudijk remarks, since it is a pictographic inventory of the church of San Andrés Tetepilco, comprising two pages. Sadly, it is very damaged.
Finally, the third document, now baptised as the Tira of San Andrés Tetepilco, is a pictographic history in the vein of the Boturini and the Aubin codices, comprising historical information regarding the Tenochtitlan polity from its foundation to the year 1603. It seems to belong to the same family as the Boturini, the Aubin, the Ms. 40 and the Ms. 85 of Paris, that is to say, some of the main codices dealing with Aztec imperial history, and Brito considers it as a sort of bridge between the Boturini and the Aubin, since its pictographic style is considerably close to the early colonial one of the former, rather than the late colonial one of the latter. It comprises 20 rectangular pages of amate paper, and contains new and striking iconography, including a spectacular depiction of Hernán Cortés as a Roman soldier. In the Aztec side of things, new iconography of Moctezuma Ilhuicamina during his conquest of Tetepilco is presented (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Codices of San Andrés Tetepilco: a) Map of the Founding of San Andrés Tetepilco; b) Inventory of the Church of San Andrés Tetepilco; c) Tira of San Andrés Tetepilco
Of course, new and very interesting examples of Aztec writing are contained throughout all these documents, including old and new toponyms, spellings of Western and Aztec names, and even some information that confirms that some glyphs formerly considered as hapax, as the chi syllabogram in the spelling of the name Motelchiuhtzin in Codex Telleriano-Remensis 43r, discussed in another post of this blog, were not anomalous but possibly conventional. Besides logosyllabic spellings, the presence of pictographs with alphabetic glosses in Nahuatl will be of great help to ascertain the functioning of this still controversial part of the Aztec communication system.
In any case, the author of this blog remains expectant of the future digital and physical publication of the Codices by Baltazar Brito’s team of experts, promised yesterday, and congratulate them for their breakthrough discovery. Cheers for Aztec writing and its everlasting cultural legacy!
Abstract: In this entry, I discuss most of the written variants of the name of the seventh Aztec emperor, Tizoc, which has puzzled specialists for at least a century both in account of its etymology and its glyphic forms. I propose that most instances of this name are examples of the phenomenon of phonetic alteration in spelling, which is different from phonetic alteration in the spoken language, and is a feature of other writing systems, specifically of Sumerian (cfr. Viano 2015). Besides offering readings for most of the variants of this name, I propose that the lone variant te-zo, Tezo(c), found in Codex Telleriano Remensis 38v and 39r, could indicate that the name’s original form was Tezoc, ‘bleeder’.
The name of the seventh tlatoani or ruler of Tenochtitlan, Tizoc, has the rare privilege of being puzzling both to grammarians and epigraphists. Considered in general a weak ruler in account of his poor military record, short reign, and probable murder (Hassig 1988: 198-199), Tizoc’s greatest accomplishment was initiating the final expansion of the great temple of Tenochtitlan, depicted in many pictographic sources and acknowledged as the most relevant event of his reign (cfr. Sahagun 1997: 187). However, besides his unfortunate reign, Tizoc (reverential Tizocicatzin) remains a mystery for the posterity, for reasons that the Aztec didn’t suspect: his own name.
As mentioned, the name Tizoc is an etymological enigma. No real consensus on its origin exists, given the fact that the name as such is nonsensical in Nahuatl (Whittaker 2021: 149); the most accepted, but still doubted, proposal is that of Cecilio Robelo (1909: 356-360) who proposes that the speculative etymology offered by Torquemada and Clavijero, ‘the pierced one’, makes no grammatical sense, and offers ‘the bled one’ in substitution, discarding also the form tezoc, ‘bleeder’. Robelo’s disquisition is interesting, because it is not only etymological, but also epigraphic, and as such it reflects the prejudices of the time on Aztec writing. He suggests that the usual form of this emperor’s name, a leg with little dots, is not phonetic but ‘ideographic’ (mostly a synonym for ‘logographic’ in his terminology), and is a reference to the act of self-bleeding, an interesting problem in itself to which I will return later.
A recent solution to both the written and the etymological dilemma has been advanced by Gordon Whittaker in his recent book on Aztec writing (2021: 149-151). He proposes that the name itself comes from a contraction of the phrase teezzo acic, which would mean “He has arrived well born”, thus the reverential form is rather important to understand the origin of the name. Whittaker’s reading gives the ‘leg’ sign the logographic value ACI(C), and states that the dotted pattern stands for a CVC syllabogram tiz, from tizatl, ‘chalk’. Thus, most of the time the reading would be tiz-ACIC with one important exception, the version of Primeros Memoriales, where the name has an earplug that Whittaker reads as a sign of nobility and thus as a logogram TEEZZO, ‘well born, son of nobles’, or perhaps as tiz-zo-AZIC if the plug element is taken as zo. While the proposed etymology is certainly beautiful and the reading value ACI(C) for the foot glyph is attested in Matrícula de Huexotzinco, usually accompanied by a footstep which would be HUAL, hual, “back” (Thouvenot 2019a), which gives support to Whittaker’s proposal (Figure 1), I would like to offer my own reading of most of the variants of the Tizoc glyph, as well as an alternative explanation of its form.
Figure 1. a) Some of Whittaker’s analyses of the name Tizocic (2021: 149); b) HUAL-ACIC, Hualacic, “He is returned” (Codex Vergara 826r and 642r).
While Robelo thought that the name was ‘ideographic’ and contained no phoneticism, the fact is that Tizoc is perhaps one of the most fascinating examples of the dilemmas surrounding phoneticism in Aztec writing. What I propose here is that the eccentric spelling of his name is the result of a feature of some writing systems: phonetic alterations, which belongs to the more general phenomenon of unortographic or ‘unexpected’ spellings.
What is unortographic writing? Simply put, “the concept of unortographic writing serves to explain deviation from expected writings” (Gonçalves 2015: 45). This phenomenon is tied to phoneticism, and in the case of Sumerian it reflects the substitution of logograms with phonograms, as well as the reception of Sumerian writing in peripheral centres, although it is also present in the central areas (Viano 2016: 141). Unortographic or irregular spellings can arise through many mechanisms: assimilation, metathesis, ‘ear-spellings’, and the case that interests us phonetic alterations, which “are not understood as phonetic changes similar to those produced in spoken languages, but as changes in the use of the syllabary” (Viano 2016: 186). As Viano explains, these shifts are not phonetic per se[1]. The extensive Sumerian corpus has allowed researchers to systematically classify and study these alterations[2]. Of course, in the case of a corpus much less studied, and belonging to a very distant space and time, such as the Aztec one, the question becomes more complicated, and the work is incipient.
Returning to Tizoc and its many written forms, we can see that in the majority of the cases, the syllabogram xo, with the shape of a foot, is used with the reading value zo, a simple, unortographic shift of the kind z > x in the use of the syllabary. This shift can also have other explanations: colonial examples show that the Aztec heard the Spanish s as their x, and wrote it accordingly, as in the use of the logogram XAN for santo (cfr. Galarza 1988: 23-49), but this explanation only works properly in the transcription of foreign names, and the spelling of Tizoc has actual pre-Hispanic examples, such as those found in monumental sculpture (see below); another explanation would be progressive phonetic assimilation of the xo to its succeeding zo, although in writing this phenomenon usually creates wrong rather than right readings (Viano 2016: 220-221). In any case, I will start this exposition with the easiest examples. The most well-known glyphic forms of the name Tizoc are characterized by the CVC syllabogram tiz (formed by truncating the logogram TIZA, as Whittaker already noted), followed by zo. Thus, the clearest forms of the name comes from Codex Azcatitlan 20, and Codex Cozcatzin 20r. The forms found in Codex Tovar 111r and Codex Aubin 37v, zo-xo, are the first examples of the phonetic alteration z > x proposed here, and are iconographically unambiguous (Figure 2).
Figure 2. a and b) tiz-zo, Tizo(c), Tizoc (Codex Azcatitlan 20, Codex Cozcatzin 20r); c and d) zo-xo, (Ti)zo(c), Tizoc (Codex Tovar 111r, Codex Aubin 37v).
The next form, found in the Florentine Codex, presents a ball of chalk (tizatl), pierced by a wooden stylus, with a hanging third element which appears in Codex Mexicanus 64 as a visual variant of the ‘nose-plug’ syllabogram zo; it could also denote a nacochtli (ear plug) rather than a nose-plug given its vertical arrangement and its visual affinity with the earplugs of Chantico in Codex Telleriano Remensis. Nonetheless, the reading value is the same (Figure 3).
Figure 3. a) tiz-zo-zo, Tizo(c), Tizoc (Florentine Codex 2, 2r), b) TECU-zo-ILHUICA-MINA, (Mo)tecuzo(ma) Ilhuicamina, ‘He is angry like a lord, he shoots the heavens’; notice that the royal diadem of the tlatoani is part of the reading (Codex Mexicanus 64); c) Chantico’s earplugs (Codex Telleriano Remensis 41v).
An interesting problem arises with the most well-known form, which we could nickname ‘dotted leg’. We have seen that both Robelo and Whittaker have opposing views, the first stating that the dots are piercing signs, and the other stating that the dots are chalk. In fact, strictly speaking, both can be true. The ‘chalk’ (tizatl) element can be both denoted by a ball of chalk or by a dotted pattern, as numerous examples in Codex Mendoza (cfr. Wood 2020) makes clear. However, less known but visually identic is a variant of zo found in the profession caczoc, ‘sandal maker’ in the Matricula de Huexotzinco, which shows a sandal (cactli) or a corn husk (zoctli) marked with small piercings all over, already classified by Marc Thouvenot (2019b). I have followed Whittaker in reading tiz-xo, but the reading zo-xo is probable too (Figure 4).
Figure 4. a) tiz-xo, Tizo(c), Tizoc, or perhaps zo-xo (Codex Mendoza 12r); b and c) tiz-xo-zo Tizo(c), Tizoc (Primeros Memoriales 51v; Codex Ramírez, plate 13); c) CAC-zo, caczo(c), caczoc ‘sandal maker’ (Matrícula de Huexotzinco 831v); d) zo-ZOC, (cac)zoc, caczoc ‘sandal maker’ (Matrícula de Huexotzinco 826r)
Next is the ‘striped foot’ variant, the one found in Pre-Hispanic monumental sculpture, in the Codex Mexicanus 17 & 71, and the Tira de Tepechpan. There is a visual ambiguity in the sculptural forms. The one at the dedication stone of Tenochtitlan seems to have a striped pattern on it according to most artistic renderings; the Tizoc’s stone one is too eroded at its surface to state whether the foot sign was further incised with dots or stripes, but it is probable, and thus I will group it the other, tentatively. Now, what could be the reading value of this striped element? Luckily for us, Primeros Memoriales, that veritable encyclopaedia of Aztec iconography, comes to our aid. In folio 264v, in the description of the array of Amimitl, god of hunters, we learn that the pattern of thin black stripes in his leg is described with the sentence motizahuahuanticac, ‘he is painted with stripes of chalk’ (Sahagún 1997: 107). Hence, the vertical striped pattern here is actually another variant of the logogram TIZA, and its derivative CVC syllabogram tiz. Finally, the variant of the Mexicanus needs a little commentary: it presents a variant of zo which seems to be motivated by bundles of piercing spines such as those portrayed in Codex Mendoza 62r, which seem to get poorer in detail with each iteration (Figure 5).
Figure 5. a and b) tiz-xo, Tizo(c), Tizoc (Dedication Stone of the Great Temple); c) tiz-xo-zo, Tizo(c), Tizoc, Codex Mexicanus 17; d) The hunting god Amimitl (Primeros Memoriales 264v); e) Novice priest carrying piercing spines (Codex Mendoza 62r); f and g) tiz-xo-tiz-zo,Tizo(c), Tizoc (Codex Mexicanus 71); h) tiz-xo, Tizo(c), Tizoc, (Tira de Tepechpan 12).
The two variants found in Codex Duran are perhaps the most problematic (Figure 6). The first variant presents a darkened leg being pierced. Usually, this is the logogram TLIL, ‘dark’, but in this case, this logogram is read it seems, quite exceptionally, as a syllabogram ti. Indeed, this form may be related to the equally rare spelling of the name Tlalticpac, (‘On the Earth’) found in Codex Vergara 20r. Note that the ‘ink’ element (tlilli, logogram TLIL) above the logogram TLAL, tlalli, ‘earth’, an arrangement which is read (T)ICPAC, as Whittaker has shown in his analysis of the glyphs for Oztoticpac in Codex Mendoza 10v (2021: 108), and the pa syllabogram derived from the logogram PAPA, from papatli, ‘hair’. An alternative explanation of this hapax form is a scribal error in the rendering of the striped pattern tiz. The next one is equally perplexing, and is another hapax. It presents a leg with some bells (coyolli) being pierced. The second element could be the logogram COYOL, coyolli, bell, although the most likely explanation is that in this case the sign is iconographic and does not have any reading. If this element were not to be ignored, my best guess here is that some metathesis is present, transforming the first syllable co- into oc (as OL becomes lo in the Spanish name “Alonso”, cfr. Davletshin 2021: 63) but of course this is uncertain for the moment, as no other examples of this reading for the glyph could be found in the corpus. I advance the two explanations for these strange forms, but the reader can decide for the more conventional solutions.
Finally, a comment is needed on what is perhaps the most mysterious variant of them all, not on epigraphic but on actual phonetic grounds. It occurs twice in Codex Telleriano Remensis. This variant simply spells the name Tizoc as Tezoc, ‘bleeder’, by substituting the ball of chalk with a stone, syllabogram te. Of course, since this reading is only to be found in this document, there is a number of plausible explanations. One would be a change of the type e > i, which could be explained by assuming that the scribe simply wrote a ‘by ear’ spelling, or committed a mistake: spellings which confuse i and e are found in alphabetic sources (Tezcatlipoca/Tezcatlepoca, Cuauhtliquetzqui/Cuauhtlequetzqui, Cuitlahuac/Cuetlahuac). The other possibility is that the original form of the name was actually Tezoc, and Tizoc is the result of a vowel shift only affecting the ‘name’ variant of the word, while the noun itself remained unaffected. This would imply that the Telleriano spelling is ultra-correct or archaic, but the main difficulty is that this codex is, of course, later than the Pre-Hispanic examples found in monumental sculpture, which favour tiz-xo, thus, this suggestion must remain hypothetical (Figure 7).
Whatever the truth behind the name of Tizoc is, this short note can give us an idea of the multiple headaches that the glyphic spelling of a name with an obscure, unsolved etymology can create for Nahuatl epigraphists. The mechanism proposed here, that of phonetic alteration, can also be useful to conceptualize changes such as tzi > xi in the name me-tzi, Mexi, Mexi, in Codex Mendoza 2r, for this name is never written in the alphabetic sources as Metzin (‘little maguey’), but as Mexi or Meci, of uncertain etymology (Guerra Hernández 2021). In any case, and whatever explanation is the most satisfying for the reader, I do concur with Whittaker that the study of both Nahuatl grammar and Nahuatl writing is constantly improving thanks to the efforts of generations of scholars, and perhaps in the future we will have better explanations for the traditional conundrums of the language and its writing system, which have busied the minds of researchers for more than a century.
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Gabriel Kruell and Marc Thouvenot for their comments on my ideas. All the faults of this note are mine alone.
References
Davletshin, Alberto. 2021. “Descripción funcional de la escritura jeroglífica náhuatl y una lista de términos técnicos para el análisis de sus deletreos” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 62: 43-91.
Galarza, Joaquín. 1988. Estudios de escritura indígena tradicional azteca-náhuatl. Mexico: Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos
Gonçalves, Carlos. 2015. Mathematical Tablets from Tell Harmal. Cham: Springer.
Guerra Hernández, Lino. 2021. Los fundadores de Tenochtitlan: Sus principales personajes. Mexico: Ce-Acatl.
Hassig, Ross. 1988. Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Robelo, Cecilio. 1909. Nombres de los reyes de México: Estudio etimológico. Mexico: Imprenta y Fototipia de la Secretaría de Fomento.
Viano, Maurizio. 2015. “Unorthographic Writings”. In The Reception of Sumerian Literature in the Western Periphery, 141-228. Venice: Ca’ Foscari.
Sahagún, Fray Bernardino de. 1997. Primeros Memoriales. Trans. Thelma Sullivan. Norman, OK: The University of Oklahoma Press.
Thouvenot, Marc. 2019a. “Hualacic” in CEN, Compendio Enciclopédico Náhuatl, [https://cen.sup-infor.com/]
Whittaker, Gordon. 2021. Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs: A Guide to Nahuatl Writing. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Wood, Stephanie, ed. 2020. “Tizatl”, in Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, Wired Humanities Projects, University of Oregon [https://aztecglyphs.uoregon.edu/]
[1] “For example, when the sign KI is used to write gi4, it is read here as ki rather than gi5 because the purpose of the analysis is to show that a sign with an original voiceless consonant was used to write a logogram with a voiced sound. Therefore the shift g > k is evaluated only in terms of the syllabary, without regard to the actual pronunciation of the sign KI, whether /ki/ or /gi/” (2016: 186).
[2] See an extensive list of these phonetic alterations in Sumerian writing compiled by Viano (2015: 186-196).
Abstract: An interpretation is proposed for some glyphs depicting an obscure historical event in Tizoc’s reign, which can be found in Codex en Cruz 7, Codex Azcatitlan 19v. They refer to an Otomi rebellion at Chapa de Mota, consignated in Anales de Tlatelolco and Codex Huichapan f52
Since our knowledge of Aztec pictorials is relatively extensive, thanks in no small part to colonial glosses and the continued attention of modern scholars since the work of Aubin, not many people talk nowadays about any “mysteries” in Aztec writing, in contrast to the still important number of undeciphered signs in Maya writing, or the uncertainties surrounding Mixtec pictorials. However, the truth is that some “passages” in Aztec codices are indeed rather elusive. This entry is about one such obscure sections in a document that deserves more contemporary attention: I am referring to the Codex en Cruz, excellently edited and studied by Charles E. Dibble (1981). However, despite Dibble’s authoritative, accurate and (almost) exhaustive comment, there are still some parts of this document which are in the dark for our current knowledge. One of them is the upper section of the year 4 Reed (1483) in folio 7 in Dibble’s copy, G in the diagram that accompanies the original at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. This small bit of history, which happened during the reign of Tizoc, is only denoted by three mysterious signs: that of a snake above a disk of water, a wooden beam (huepantli), and a shield with a macuahuitl, which in this document usually denotes war (Figure 1).
Figure 1. a) The year 4 Reed (Codex en Cruz 7); b) The ‘water-snake’ and the ‘shield, macuahuitl and beam’ event in question, in the upper section. Both drawings are from Charles Dibble.
Before venturing a new reading of this passage, it is necessary to explain its context, and what Dibble has already said about it. The year 4 Reed or 1483 in the second 52 year cycle depicted in the Codex en Cruz corresponds to the reign of Ahuizotl, the short-lived seventh tlatoani of Tenochtitlan. Despite being a Tetzcocan manuscript, the history of Tenochtitlan, the seat of the power of the Culhua-Mexitin, is constantly present in it. The first sequence above the year sign has been interpreted by Dibble as the birth of a character named Huaxtzin in Chiauhtla; the second, to the raising of a temple at a location that may be very well Chiauhtla itself too (1981: 27). After this, another line divides the geographical scope of the events depicted in the column, and the glyph of Tenochtitlan situates the rest of the signs in relationship to this polity. Dibble (1981: 28)correctly interprets the event depicted directly above the Tenochtitlan sign as the laying of the foundation of the temple of Huitzilopochtli, one of the main events in Tizoc’s reign: we can see the king with his name-glyph, working with a digging stick above the foundation , an event depicted in most extant pictorial chronicles about his reign (like the Telleriano-Remensis and the Azcatitlan).
Afterwards, two captives are seen above the king, each associated to different glyphs. Dibble correctly observed that they were from Huexotzinco, thanks to the curved lip ornament that denotes the inhabitants of this Altepetl. He hypothesized that they were name-glyphs, but they are difficult to read: the first is interpreted by him to be an eagle, but the problem is that such predator could denote many names: Cuauhtzin and Tlotli are a couple of alternatives, among many others; the second, mostly effaced in the original, is even more obscure. A probable clue lies in Chimalpahin, which relates that in the year 4 Reed, not only the foundations of the temple of Huitzilopochtli were laid, but also captives from Cozcacuauhtenanco and Tlaollan were sacrificed (1998: 275). The first glyph could certainly resemble collar-less versions of the glyph COZCACUAUH, which are rare but do exist, or perhaps is a mere abbreviation of CUAUH. The second glyph, however, is almost impossible to figure out: it seems to be a face with a bun on its back, and therefore seems to have no relationship to the well-known toponym for Tlaollan, a basket with corn kernels, so this issue must be left unsolved for now, although I suspect that another close examination of the original could reveal something, since the different copies by León y Gama, Pichardo, and Dibble all disagree.
The names, or perhaps places of origin, of these captives are certainly an interesting question, but the mystery regarding what follows is the focus of this entry. Dibble, with a very insightful intuition, observed that an unknown toponym composed of a serpent with water, the shield and macuahuitl sign, and a beam (huepantli) sign, suggested a war-event related to the procurement of beams for the construction of Huitzilopochtli’s temple. He also relates these signs with a parallel and also obscure event depicted at Codex Azcatitlan 19v, which also happened during the reign of Tizoc: after the foundation-laying event in Tenochtitlan, denoted by a wall, a huictli (compare with Telleriano Remensis 38v), and the name-glyph of that polity, a very obscure compound of signs follows: the wooden beam sign with a cord, a shield, a deer’s head, and the name of an unknown place denoted by a body of water and a flag. Both passages remain obscure until now: Barlow suggested the reading Ahuepanco for the place by joining the water and beam signs. Recent re-examinations of the Azcatitlan, such as those by Graulich (1995: 120) and Rajagopalan (2019: 64), offer again Barlow’s tentative reading while remaining a bit skeptical.
Figure 2. The reign of Tizoc, Codex Azcatitlan 19v.
Before offering a new interpretation/reading for this passage, something must be said about the main aspect of Aztec writing that is still obscure or undecided for us: what is the real nature of the signs that are neither toponyms nor calendric signs, nor numbers, nor names, which sometimes become completely difficult to differentiate from “writing proper” due to the iconic nature of the Aztec script, but definitely carry more information than their logosyllabic counterparts? For example, in this passage: what are the “shield and macuahuitl” sign which seem to denote the action of war rather than just the word yaotl, and the beam sign, which seems to denote more than the mere word huepantli, codifying a little story of sorts? Many labels have been offered for such signs: semasiography (Galarza 1990, Boone 2000), iconography (Lacadena 2008) or, a proposal that has great potential, that of “embedded texts” of Janet Berlo (1983), which Albert Davletshin (2003: 62) and Dmitri Beliaev (2016: 205) have urged us to re-consider. However, it is more prudent to “suspend judgment” on this question for now, but it is important to keep it in mind, because it can give us an inkling on what Aztec writing itself was about.
The truth is that the method of interpretation followed by Dibble was very insightful and pertinent, and, as we will see, it retains its relevance. Roughly speaking, it consisted in assessing the glyph’s iconography and consider possible readings, and then offering an explanation for their apparition through parallel events in alphabetic chronicles and other pictorials in order to substantiate the interpretation. After searching for possible parallels, I feel that it is possible to propose a reading for this passage, which was obtained by following a similar method to that of Dibble, although aided by the enormous advances in the catalogation and understanding of Aztec script brought by later specialists (Thouvenot 2012; Zender et. al. 2013). As mentioned, the idea was simple: to look for passages of historical events associated to Tizoc which can be related to these glyphs regarding of what they looked like, and see if anything could fit. The relevant passage is in a source that Dibble actually used in his edition of the Codex en Cruz: Anales de Tlatelolco. There we read the following concerning the year 5 Flint (1484):
Quiualtzaque in chiapantlaca, uepanato Itzmiquilpa, ahuehuetl in quiuillanato ytlaquetzallo yezquia yteucal Huitzilopochtli; y no umotlatziuhcaneque contlatique yn iuepamecauh y quiualtzaque.
The Chiapantlaca rebelled, they were cutting ahuehuetes in Iztmiquilpan, which they dragged to make the columns of the temple of Huitzilopochtli: they rebelled when they worked with laziness and burned the cords which they used to drag the logs (Tena 2004: 96-97).
Thus, we have a passage clearly related to the context that Dibble (correctly) guessed: a rebellion or war event related to the beams used to start building the temple of Huitzilopochtli, which happened during the reign of Tizoc. The only difference is the date, which in the Tlatelolco chronicles is set one year later, but the rest of it is identical: furthermore, the Tlatelolco document set the accession date of Tizoc 1 year later than the Codex en Cruz, at 3 Rabbit, but the discrepancy is easily explained through the disparity of local historiographic traditions. But what about the glyphs? The ‘snake and water’ sign is clearly the toponym of Chiapan/Chiyauhpan. It is related to the root chiyauh, ‘filth, grease’; Molina also reports that chiyahuitl was a certain kind of snake (Wimmer 2004a), probably living in swamps. It seems that this root was either depicted by a marsh, by the snake, or by both, to form the logogram CHIYAUH, ‘filth, grease, swamp snake’. The CHIYAUH logogram appears in the Matricula de Huexotzinco to denote the name chiyauhcoatl, or ‘marsh snake’, and the toponym chiyauhtzinco, “place of the little marsh”, for Chiyauhtlalli means swamp or marsh, just as the name sign depicts.[1] Thus, the snake and water sign is a somewhat abbreviated form of the toponym Chiyauhpan, or Chiapan, “place of marshes”. This can be better understood by comparing with the renditon in the Azcatitlan, which has the marsh sign next to a flag or pa syllabogram, forming CHIYAUH-pa, Chiyauhpan.
Figure 3. a) CHIYAUH-COA, Chiyauhcoa(tl) (Matrícula de Huexotzinco 711r, 816r); b) CHIYAUH-tzin, Chiyauhtzin(co) (Matrícula de Huexotzinco 601r; cfr. Thouvenot 2012); c) CHIYAUH-pa, Chiyauhpan, Chiyauhpan (Azcatitlan 19v); d) CHIYAUH,Chiyauh(pan), Chiyauhpan. (Codex en Cruz 7).
The rest is, of course, easy to understand in the Codex en Cruz through the parallel alphabetic passage in the Anales de Tlatelolco, but not so in the Azcatitlan. In the Codex en Cruz, the ‘shield and macuahuitl’ sign is a ‘pictogram’ for war/rebellion, as it is in the rest of the Codex, while the beam or huepantli sign explains the circumstances of this war: hence, the final reading would have been similar to that offered in the Anales de Tlatelolco. But what about the Azcatitlan? Here something interesting happens. The toponym Chiyauhpan is clearly read CHIYAUH-pa: the tepetl or ‘mountain’ sign is, again, ‘iconographic’, ‘semasiographic’ or whatever terminology we want to use, only denoting the abstract idea of an Altepetl polity, the place where the action occurred. But what about the water sign, which gives an unlikely complement to huepantli? It is probable that this sign simply is a spelling added to indicate something like ahuehuepantli, that is, ‘beams made of the ahuehuetl tree’. Another explanation, offered to me by Gabriel Kruell, is that the sign actually denotes the verb huepana, “to drag wood”, a solution that is also likely. The shield sign is another variant for the aforementioned pictograph of war, and is identical to the version present at the Codex Aubin; however, its motivation is also related to how the war actually started, according to Otomí sources.
Indeed, the final confirmation for this reading, as well as the full details of this event from the point of view of the rebels, comes from Codex Huichapan, an Otomi codex. In the folio 52 of this document, the same event is represented, associated with the year 5 Reed of the Otomi calendar (Figure 4). The Otomi gloss gives us an insight on the actual location of this rebellion, and the true reasons for it: in fact, the rebellion started because the Aztec wanted the Otomi to drag a huge ahuehuete tree; however, the Huichapan Codex states that the tree would not budge after reaching Tlalnepantla: hence, they left a shield above the tree, and the rebellion started:
Here began the war in Chapa de Mota: it started with the rooted tree that could not be lifted, it only reached to Tlanepantla amid the lands, and when they came to take the tree further, they just laid a shield on it. The war with those of Chapa de Mota was re-started: thus began the war at Chapa de Mota. (Ecker 2003: 79).
Figure 4. The rebellion at Chapa de Mota in 5 Reed (Codex Huichapan f52)
Finally, only the deer head remains mysterious. There are two possibilities. The first, considered by Barlow, is that it represents Tizoc’s conquest of Mazatlan (1949: 125), but the problem is that conquests in the Azcatitlan usually have the tepetl or ‘mountain’ sign denoting a polity or altepetl. Herren Rajagopalan’s recent study on the Boturini, Aubin and Azcatitlan offers an explanation which solves this problem in my point of view. This deer head is clearly incomplete, lacking the bottom part of its ‘frame line’: Rajagoplan suggests that it is an incomplete day-sign, and I agree that this is the most likely explanation in graphic terms (2018: 64). Probably, it states the day where the rebellion occurred. With all these elements, the passage is finally clear.
All things considered, this little bit of history doesn’t seem like much. But this exercise in interpretation tells us something important: the logic of Aztec tlacuillolli as a full communication system was overwhelmingly pictorial, and in it sometimes it can be actually difficult to ascertain the separation between ‘writing’ and ‘iconography’. We are left in the dark about the meaning of the whole when we consider the individual signs in isolation, to the point where we don’t really know if they are ‘iconography’ or ‘writing proper’: we need a historical context, transmitted to us through alphabetic glosses, to get a grasp of the nature of the signs and the ‘embedded text’ contained in them. This ‘embedded text’ probably roughly corresponded to the alphabetic account of the Anales de Tlatelolco, rather than to a text only produced by the reading of these signs as logograms. Of course, these assertions are conflictive with the current narrow definition of writing (Daniels 1996: 3), which specifically states that any system that needs the intervention of the original utterer (here, the tlacuilos ‘speaking’ through the alphabetic colonial versions of Aztec histories) to relay its full message is not writing, for writing is not considered as a mere assembly of signs but as the whole working of them. The dilemma is this: can tlacuilolli, taken as a whole rather than at the level of names, be considered as writing, or we need to continue using the split ‘iconography’ vs writing which doesn’t really correspond to the native categories, who lacked a word to distinguish logograms/syllabograms from “iconography”?
Regardless of the solution to this conundrum, which I cannot advance here, it must be said that the logic of these documents is dominantly ‘top-down’ rather than ‘bottom-up’: unlike in Maya writing, we gain little by the correct understanding of individual signs (as Barlow’s mistake makes evident), while contextual meaning is everything. It is also not always clear when something is “iconography” merely because of its appearance: the ‘war’ sign and even the beam sign, which denote something beyond mere names, or even more, can effectively double as “names” and “embedded texts”, proves it. In any case, the heuristics introduced by Dibble for this document still hold up, and can be used to our advantage in other obscure passages in Aztec writing: ‘attack’ the context as far as reliable parallel alphabetic sources permit it, and the signs will fall in place themselves; only after these possibilities are exhausted we can venture hypotheses based on analogies to known “pictographic” and logosyllabic signs. Of course, as mentioned, originally the source of this full reading was nothing else but that which Daniels calls ‘the original utterer’, that agent which in the perspective of current mainstream grammatology forbids Aztec writing from being considered ‘real writing’: a tlacuilo, a trained painter-writer in the historical tradition, which closed the gap between these signs and the reader and uttered for the readers a full message. But the answer to this question must be left for the future.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank Stan Declercq for facilitating me the relevant pages of Graulich’s edition of the Codex Azcatitlan. As in many other entries, I also want to thank Gabriel Kruell for reading this text and offering his views on it. He offers the following reading for the Azcatitlan: “Tizocicatzin was installed on the throne. In this year, he laid tezontle on the Temple of Huitzilopochtli. The inhabitants of Chiapan rebelled, wooden beams were brought from Itzmiquilpan, ahuehuete logs were dragged to serve as beams in the temple of Huitzilopochtli, but they didn’t want to work, they burned the ropes, and they mutinied”
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Tlacuilolli 