ThePARIJournal A quarterly publication of the Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute Volume VIII, No. 4, Spring 2008 Special Nahuatl Writing Issue Regional Scribal Traditions: containing: Methodological Implications for the Regional Scribal 1 Traditions: Decipherment of Nahuatl Writing Methodological Implications for the Alfonso Lacadena Decipherment of Universidad Complutense de Madrid Nahuatl Writing by Alfonso Lacadena Abstract compounds. This peculiarity, rather than being looked upon as problematical or as PAGES 1-22 After more than a century of research, evidence that the inscriptions of the site Nahuatl writing is not yet completely de- somehow do not relate directly to the rest A Nahuatl Syllabary ciphered. One reason is that scholars have by of the corpus of Classic inscriptions, has imposed an artificial neglect of certain Alfonso Lacadena been exploited in the successful decipher- PAGE 23 hieroglyphic texts. An important group ment of several signs. of documents, including the Codex Santa For a methodologically more correct One Hundred and María Asunción and the Memorial de los approach to Nahuatl writing, it is im- Fifty Years of Nahuatl Indios de Tepetlaoztoc, has traditionally portant to incorporate the documents of Decipherment been taken to be unrepresentative of the by the Tetzcocan school into the corpus of Marc Zender Precolumbian writing system. Since these Nahuatl hieroglyphic texts, using them in PAGES 24-37 documents exhibit a more frequent use the process of decipherment. Only when of phonetic compounds than others like we consider the script as a whole and the The wa and wa the Codex Mendoza or the Matrícula de 1 2 corpus in its totality will we be able to Phonetic Signs and Tributos, they have been considered to be complete the decipherment and system- the Logogram for WA influenced by the alphabetic writing sys- atization of Nahuatl writing. in Nahuatl Writing tem brought by the Spanish. In this paper, by Alfonso Lacadena I justify the full use of this group of docu- Introduction PAGES 38-45 ments, arguing that the higher frequency of phoneticism is not a consequence of In the middle of the nineteenth century, On the Spanish influence, but rather an idio- the French scholar Joseph Marius Alexis Complementary syncratic characteristic of the Tetzcocan Aubin (1849) published an important Signs of the Mexican scribal school. The scribes of Tetzcoco in work on the writing system of the Nahuatl Graphic System language. Employing examples derived by many cases favored more phonetically Zelia Nuttall transparent spellings, but they used exact- principally from a mid-sixteenth century PAGES 45-48 ly the same spelling rules and orthograph- document, the Codex Vergara, Aubin pro- ic conventions as the scribes belonging to posed the identification of more than a Joel Skidmore hundred glyphs and their corresponding Editor the other contemporary schools. [email protected] There is an analogy here with neighbor- readings. Glyphic compounds identified by Aubin, such as itz-co-atl for Itzcoatl, The PARI Journal ing Maya writing, where the differences 202 Edgewood Avenue between regional scribal schools have nev- San Francisco, CA 94117 1 415-664-8889 er been interpreted as evidence for the ex- A version of this work was presented at the istence of different writing systems. Thus, 5th World Archaeological Congress, Washington, Electronic version D.C., June 22, 2003, in the symposium “Written available at: for example, during the Terminal Classic www.mesoweb.com/ History and Geography in Central Mexico: Codices, pari/journal/0804 the scribes of Chichen Itza favored a more Lienzos, and Mapas Linked to the Ground,” orga- frequent use of syllabic signs in glyphic nized by Lloyd Anderson. ISSN 1531-5398 The PARI Journal 8(4):1-22. 1 Lacadena te-o-cal-tlan for Teocaltitlan, and mo-cuauh-zo-ma for the scribes, who modified their original system in order to personal name Mocuauhzoma, led him to suggest that adapt it to these new cases, making it more phonetic. the Nahuatl writing system was basically “une écriture Alternatively (or in addition), the indigenous scribes syllabique”—that is, a syllabic writing system. may have been influenced by the completely phonetic Aubin’s contributions, however, met with fierce writing system of the Spanish and tried to bring their opposition in the scientific community. Despite the traditional system closer to it. The greater phoneticism clear significance of his examples, critics of his method present in the documents of the Tepetlaoztoc group uti- questioned the extent to which they could be said to lized by Aubin would undoubtedly have resulted from be representative. As first noted by Seler (in Nicholson the idiosyncracies of the region’s scribes, especially as 1973:29), Aubin had for the most part used examples influenced by the phonetic writing of the Spanish. proceeding from a very limited region, the zone of In an important article on the extent of phoneticism Tepetlaoztoc, a dependency of Tetzcoco. Other docu- in Nahuatl writing, Nicholson (1973) considered these ments containing highly phonetic compositions, such questions. Although Nicholson himself accepted the as the Codex Santa María Asunción or the Memorial de prevailing thesis that Prehispanic writing was basical- los Indios de Tepetlaoztoc, derived from the same lo- ly logographic with a barely developed phoneticism— cale. The clearly marked phoneticism associated with even employing the term “semasiographic” coined by documents from the area of Tepetlaoztoc contrasted Gelb (1963) in a very influential book of that time—he notably with examples of Nahuatl writing from other insisted on three crucial points: first, that phoneticism areas, such as Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco. Mexica doc- was not, perhaps, so limited in Prehispanic times as uments, such as the Matrícula de Tributos, the Codex had come to be considered; second, that one needed to Mendoza, or the Codex Boturini—considered to be the explore the possibility that Tetzcocan documents might only faithful representations of the traditional writing also reflect traditional Nahuatl writing; and third, that system, with little or no Spanish influence—differed it was necessary to rise above the circular reasoning from the examples of the Tepetlaoztoc group in vari- that attributed the apparent increase in phoneticism to ous respects. In point of fact, there are no examples of the direct or indirect influence of the Spanish: completely syllabic compounds in these manuscripts, as distinct from those presented by Aubin. On the con- The explanation of the special case of the Tepetlaoztoc trary, what one finds is an overwhelming use of logo- group is admittedly particularly difficult, but I do not think that the frequency of the “écriture syl- grams. Apart from a few examples of phonetic comple- labique” in the formation of the name and place ments, phoneticism is found most frequently in the use signs of these documents is necessarily merely the of rebus in logograms (where the sound value of the result of post-Conquest developments, although it logogram is used to evoke the same sound with a dif- may well be. ... While it is clear that many students, ferent meaning): -tlan(tli) “teeth,” for –tlān “place of, such as Aubin, Pipart, Brinton, and Whorf, undoubt- beside,” nāhua “speak” for –nāhuac “beside, together edly exaggerated the extent of pre-Hispanic phonet- with,” or pān(tli) “flag” for –pan “on, upon.” icism, some modern students may have gone too far An analysis of the few Prehispanic monuments that in the other direction, almost mechanically invok- survive, principally the cuauhxicalli of Tizoc (carved, ing “Spanish influence” to account for any marked presumably, between 1481 and 1486), confirms what phonetic usage in post-Conquest pictorials. Some of can be observed in the Matrícula de Tributos, the Codex this may have represented a continuation of genuine Mendoza, and the Codex Boturini: the scant utilization pre-Hispanic practice. In any case, I suggest we keep of phonetic signs in the Prehispanic era. Later codices our minds open concerning this possibility, pending further studies and, hopefully, the discovery of fresh from the same region of Mexico, more acculturated data. (Nicholson 1973:35-36) to Spanish influence in their pictorial representation, such as the Codex Azcatitlan, the Codex Osuna, the Unfortunately, Nicholson’s suggestions were not prop- Codex Telleriano-Remensis, or the Codex Cozcatzin, erly taken up in the following years, and to this day present a similar scarcity of phonetic examples, seem- assumptions about the nature of Nahuatl writing are ingly reinforcing the thesis that phoneticism was little not very different from those of the Seventies: (1) The developed in the original writing system. When a giv- written testimonies of the Mexica are the most repre- en text, such as the Codex of Tlatelolco or the Codex sentative of the Prehispanic writing system; (2) docu- Mexicanus, shows an increase in phonetic signs, this ments that show a greater frequency of phoneticism is usually associated with the transliteration of Span- do not represent the traditional indigenous system but ish names, which cannot, as such, reflect the traditional rather a modified one, having been influenced as much writing system. Thus the development of phoneticism by the alphabetic writing of the Spanish as by the novel might have been due to the initiative of indigenous necessities of transliterating foreign names; (3) Nahuatl 2 Regional Scribal Traditions writing