400yo Map of Nahuatl Lineage in Southern Puebla, Mexico
November 22, 2017 6:39 PM   Subscribe

An interesting mix of Aztec hieroglyphs and Spanish language. This 1593 map shows southern Puebla from the church of Todos Santos (now northeast of Mexico City) and Lake Texcoco, to the church of Santa Cruz Huitziltepec, Pue (lower right). The map also reveals the genealogy and land ownership for the Nahuatl "de Leon" family from 1480 to 1593. Just recently acquired by the U.S. Library of Congress.
posted by MovableBookLady (7 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
Neat!
posted by Dip Flash at 8:18 PM on November 22, 2017


Pretty cool stuff. The Codex Quetzalecatzin isn't new, but its always good for these often ignored bits of Mesoamerican history to get more attention by moving from private hands to public collections. I dabble a bit in Postclassic Central Mesoamerica stuff, and while I'd certainly leave the full decipherment of this to scholars with more knowledge (and time to puzzle out scribbled, half-faded glosses), there's a couple things I'm noting about this work that I thought might share.

First, Nahuatl writing is not, to be pedantic, hieroglyphic. Hieroglyphs specifically refer to Egyptian logographic writing which, at their most basic, used specific images to represent general objects. A picture of a snake represents a snake, for instance. Logographic writing systems can contain an enormous complexity though, often using the rebus principle. In Nahuatl, for instance, the word for teeth is tlantli, which matches up with the suffix -tlan meaning "place of" or "where there are." Hence why Nahuatl name glyphs for places sometimes incoporate teeth into the imagery, such as with Mazatlan, which is shown by the glyph for a deer (mazatl) combined with teeth (tlantli) to give maza(tl)+tlan = mazatlan. I'm not really seeing any amazing rebus work on the Codex Quetzalecatzin though, so this is more of just an FYI that you don't need a fully developed script to encode large amounts of data.

Second, while it's being touted as a "map," it looks like only the right side fits that description. There's a border of wavy mountains enclosing the right side of the page. It's this side of the page that acts as a map. Starting at the top-right there's a series of three oblong shapes which represent the glyph tepetl, which is representative of a polity, be it a simple village or a massive city, all of which would be termed an altepetl (pl. altepetemeh) from the Nahuatl atl (water) and tepetl (hill/mountain). Why does a "water-mountain" represent a settlement or city-state? Because language doesn't always need to tell neat stories and can sometimes be pretty arbitrary.

If we look to the center of the right-side map section though, there's another altepel glyph, this time with another glyph perched atop it. That glyph is for Ehecatl, the god of wind (and aspect of Quetzalcoatl), who is depicted with a sort of weird elongated mouth. The gloss above, just barely legible confirms this, giving the name Ecatepec, or "wind hill," the name of the altepetl. Directly below it is a depiction of Spanish church.

From there we have what appears to be a road bisecting the map side of the page, so we can probably surmise the codex shows a schematic of terrain and settlements along a specific route from the church at Ecatepec to the church shown at the bottom of the page. There's a few other altepetl glyphs along the way, including some with a man sitting, swathed in a tilmatli (a cape or cloak), who probably represents the tlatoani (lit. speaker, but essentially the ruler) of that polity. This image, for instance, seems to be for the altepetl of "Tochtepectonco?" given the gloss and the rabbit (tochtli) glyph, with the ruler having a name glyph floating above-right to his head as Ce Coatl (1 Snake). I'm unsure of the meaning of the head next to him, but the pantli (flag) is used as a shorthand for the number 20, so this could be some sort of census measure, showing maybe 20 households or families, or something like that? We can see something similar further down the page with two instances of the 20-head glyph on the right and two instances of 20-calli (house) on the left.

On the left, non-map, side of the page is the genealogy. I'll admit outright that I'm not sure about the blue orbs, but the symbol over to the top left of the page might indicate year (using the Nahuatl calendar system), possibly 2-acatl (reed) or 2-xochitl (flower). There's a faded drawing to the immediate right of the blue orbs which I assume is Quetzalecatzin (or Quetzaltecatl, the -tzin being a suffix for nobility), who would be the progenitor of the dynasty, but its far to faded to make out. The very elaborate drawing below this seems to be a more relevant ruler (there's a tradition of having claiming very ancient, hazy roots for more contemporary, famous rulers), who is given what looks like the name glyph 11-Cozcuauhtli (vulture) alongside his wife whose name glyph is too damaged for me to make out. His importance is made clear since he is depicted with in petlatl, in icpalli (the woven reed mat, the woven reed seat) along with a xiuhuitzolli, a turquoise diadem, the combination indicating a ruler of high distinction.

Below them is a cave with water coming out of it, perhaps representing some link to the fabled caves of Chichomoztoc in Aztlan (though that could just be me reading to far into this). Below that would be their progeny, starting with 4-Ollintzin (movement; ollin + tzin) and his wife, who I think is named 5-Atl (water). Again, there's a symbol off to the right which may be indicative of a year-bearing sign.

All of this may seem to be some esoteric imagery, and the "map" a mere artistic endeavor, but works like these were essentially legal documents in the early colonial period of New Spain. Throughout the later 16th and early 17th century, there was an erosion of indigenous authority, which had previously enjoyed a sort of parallel place alongside Spanish legal and political authority. In the generation or so after the defeat of Cuauhtemoc, there was a dual system of the Spanish ruling the Spanish (and converted natives), with indigenous authority holding sway over the rest. As time progressed (and major epidemics of cocolitzli struck in the 1540s and 1570s) Spanish authority became more and more the definitive law of the land, though indigenous titles still earned their holders certain rights, priviledges, and, most importantly, tribute.

Complicating all of this was the fact that Spanish authorities poorly understood the indigenous system they were ostensibly governing. Though they often used terms like "king" and "lord," these concepts did not so easily map on to the Mesoamerican political system. A tlatoani could refer to the ruler of some small village, or it could refer to a ruler of a major metropolis with multiple other tlatoque (Nahuatl plurals are... strange) owing him tribute. The Spanish implemented a system of cabecera (head) and sujeto (subject) polities to try and reconcile this, but the lines they drew were often the cause of disputes. There's a famous case of the altepetl of Huexotla objecting to it's sujeto status to the cabecera of Texcoco, making a case to the Spanish viceroy that it should be its own independent sujeto, stating its history and ruling lineage showed its independence from Texcoco.

Another layer of complication was the mixing of Mesoamerican and Spanish systems. Each altepetl may have maintained its own tlatoani, but the Spanish also set up their own political systems in the form of governors, judges, and town councils. In the early days, indigenous rulers happily accepted these new forms of governance, and moved into the positions, often taking lifetime appointments of Spanish roles which coincided with their Mesoamerican titles. The Spanish eventually set term limits on these positions though, which meant that indigenous and colonial titles (and thus authority) increasingly became separate, with minor branches of the ruling dynasty, lesser nobility, or even simple commoners taking positions of power via the Spanish system, even as a parallel system of indigenous nobility privileges was maintained, though with ever decreasing returns.

All of this meant that by the late 16th century, there was no shortage of legal challenges asserting that "Don So and So" was the descendant of "Lord Whatshisfacetzin" and therefore had special rights to extract tribute from the people of "Whatevertepec." Often this would involve complicated genealogical wrangling, made even messier by the epidemics and congregaciones (condensing of several towns into one) of the 16th Century. Given the repeated references to Ecatepec in the Codex Quetzalecatzin, and the emphasis on lineage, I would not be surprised if this document was created in part to argue for establishing or maintaining rights to extract tribute by the dynasty of Ecatepec over the region shown in the lower right of the document.

Again though, this is just a hobby of mine and based on a cursory examination of the material (zoomable high res here). I just want to help point out a few things that can help everyone understand the symbolism a little better, as well as give some historical context to the phrase "a community adapting to Spanish law and rule."
posted by Panjandrum at 9:59 PM on November 22, 2017 [33 favorites]


I regret that I have but one favorite to give for your glorious social, historical, and linguistic dissertation. This is what I come to the Internet for.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 10:34 PM on November 22, 2017


Thanks!

Also, way outside the edit window, but adding a link I left off:

This image, for instance, seems to be for the altepetl of "Tochtepectonco?"
posted by Panjandrum at 11:07 PM on November 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Hieroglyphs specifically refer to Egyptian logographic writing

Maya hieroglyphics are not Egyptian. They are also not logographic most of the time. They are syllabic. A glyph block is made up of several glyphs, each of which represents a syllable. For example, glyphs might represent the syllables ba-la-m(a), pronounced balam, which means jaguar. The final "a" matches the vowel in the syllable before it, and is silent. (It's a bit more complicated than that, of course, but that's the basics.)

However, the Maya might use a glyph of a jaguar head (a logograph) that would also be pronounced balam, but could also be several other words. So frequently the Maya would prefix a jaguar logograph with the ba glyph and maybe end it with the ma glyph, just to make sure that you were sure you got the right pronunciation of the logograph.

Since the cracking of the Maya hieroglyphic writing system in the 1970s (well, 1950s, but almost nobody was on board for a while), we can read to one level or another about 85% of the Maya glyphs now. Sometimes we know what a glyph means, but not how it is pronounced. Other times we know how it is pronounced, but not what it means. But probably more than 50% of the glyphs we know both.

It helps that the Maya languages on the monuments are still living languages, spoken by living Maya. It is about as closely related as modern English is to Chaucer.

The map is cool. I added it to my collection of downloadable colonial and precolumbian codices. There is a beautiful 498MB TIF file of it that you can download.
posted by Xoc at 11:50 PM on November 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


> All of this may seem to be some esoteric imagery, and the "map" a mere artistic endeavor, but works like these were essentially legal documents in the early colonial period of New Spain.

Yup, and I was startled when I looked at the map to realize it looked almost exactly like the (often stunningly beautiful) maps reproduced in Valerie Kivelson's Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and Its Meanings in Seventeenth-Century Russia, one of the best works of history I've read in some time. Kivelson quotes this from another book: "The cadastral map is an instrument of control which both reflects and consolidates the power of those who commission it." She explains in detail the kinds of quarrels and lawsuits that such maps were intended to settle or ward off, and I'm sure the situation in New Spain was similar. Anyone interested in this sort of thing should read her book

Thanks for the post, and Panjandrum, thanks for a great comment! But please don't use the edit window for anything but typos! Streng verboten!!
posted by languagehat at 6:07 AM on November 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


Maya hieroglyphics are not Egyptian

But also nobody in academia calls them hieroglyphs anymore, for all the reasons you note regarding them incorporating syllabic elements. That's a term that has unfortunately carried over from the pre-Knorozov era.

Nahuatl proto-script practices, however, never equaled the complexity of the Classic Maya script. Of note though, Lacadena (2008) makes an argument for the Nahuatl pictorial/symbolic tradition also incorporating some very basic syllabic elements.
posted by Panjandrum at 5:16 PM on November 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


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