Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs by Gordon Whittaker;

Author:Gordon Whittaker;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

3.41. a) Yacazozoloca seeks a bride (Codex Xolotl, Sheet 3); b) Ecatl (“Air”), read upwards from left as eECATL—MAN (“Air, Breeze”; Codex Vergara, f. 27r).

One of Achitometl’s responses places a compound glyph (9; detail in Fig. 3.42), a banner atop a bean, beside the name glyph of his daughter Ilancueitl. As given, the compound is meaningless: it cannot be logographic since neither banners nor beans fit the context. It must be phonetic, yet pan(BANNER)-e(BEAN) is as opaque as the reverse, e(BEAN)-pan(BANNER). The solution lies in a simple scribal error, one that helps to confirm a Prehispanic date for hieroglyphic sentences. In copying an earlier, now lost, manuscript in the 1540s, the scribe has inadvertently substituted the BEAN sign for the very similar RUBBER sign, which has the basic phonetic values ol, lo, and olo2, from the logographic values OL(LI), “rubber, ball,” OLOLO(A), “roll something into a ball,” and TELOLO(TLI), “ball.” The bean sign is typically oval, but note that in Fig. 3.41b, where it serves as a phonetic indicator, it is round like a rubber ball. The RUBBER sign is typically circular, but both BEAN and RUBBER are black with a white area centered at the top, although in the case of BEAN the white area may simply be an open notch, while in the case of RUBBER the enclosed white area is optional. A manuscript old enough to need copying would presumably have been written and painted more than a quarter of a century earlier and, thus, before the Conquest. The original compound glyph would have been read pan-olo2, “she is (being) transported across” (Nahuatl panōlo), referring to Ilancueitl, who, as the diagonal line of footprints indicates, was on her way across the lake to her future husband. This was a convenient excuse as to why she could not be given to Yacazozoloca!

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