Mesoamerican turtle

Turtles (Testudines) are the oldest existing group of Sauropsid reptiles. Originally from the Triassic period, they belong to the Archelosauria clade, directly related to crocodiles, birds and dinosaurs. They move very slowly and they can live very long - two characteristics that have defined their symbolism in different cultures. Although they are not considered amphibians, their evolution allowed them to adapt themselves to terrestrial and aquatic life, with existing species living in three ecosystems: terrestrial, lacustrine-fluvial and marine. They are characterised by a skeleton formed by a bony shell welded to the spine, which is made of very hard keratin plates and provides them with an excellent defensive system against predators.

Pic 1: The turtle; Florentine Codex Book XI

In Mesoamerica there was a great diversity of turtle species. Many of these species were an additional food source to fish, with a great economic and social value. For example, in the area of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Olmecs of San Lorenzo used to fish several fish and lake turtles to use them as a continuous seasonal source of proteins during river floods. Among the Maya of the Yucatecan eastern coast, sea turtles were a valuable trade resource, providing other populations in the interior of the peninsula with these products. Their precious shells were used to make objects such as the ayotapalcatl (ayotl “turtle” + tapalcatl “shell”, in the Nahuatl language), a drum made only from the turtle shell (pic 3).

Pic 3: The Goddess Xochiquetzal plays the ayotapalcatl drum, with a deer horn in her right hand and holds an ayacachtli in the left one (Codex Borgia, plate 60) (L). A musician seated on a petatl performs the same action (Codex Tudela, fol. 55r) (R)

This cosmic world is sustained by four elderly characters - the Mayan bearers of the sky or bacaboob (singular: bacab) - with zoomorphic attributes. Each bacab is located in a corner, associated with a specific direction and colour. One of these bearers carries a turtle shell on his back (pic 5, left) - associated with the tortoise, the southern direction and the colour yellow - with the same attributes as God N, an elderly toothless deity also represented as a scribe or scribal teacher, or covered with a turtle shell (pic 5, right). He is also associated with earth, thunder, rain, music, and directional mountains, alluding to the four directions of the world.

Pic 5: Turtle shell bacab sustaining the world. Pillar reliefs, El Castillo, Chichén Itzá (L). Elder God N carries a shell on his back on top of a tortoise-altar in a context of self-sacrifice; Madrid Codex pl. 19

Also, with reference to time and to the calendar cycle, the elder God N was standing on a turtle, passing a self-sacrificial rope through his body (see pic 5, right). The year bearers also pierced and bled their genitals with these long ropes, offering their blood during the Wayebꞌ period of 5 days, during which life is regenerated at the beginning of the new year and rains return. The association between the turtle and the penis arises from the analogy between the animal’s retractable head and the gland. For this reason, the turtle is considered an animal related to masculinity and fertility, appearing together with phallic sculptures and rituals in caves or in iconography related to water.

Pic 7: Turtles and aquatic animals surrounding a Jaguar warrior with a cacaxtle, Red Temple of Cacaxtla, Puebla-Tlaxcala

In relation to plants, the symbolic link between corn and turtles is widely known. In Mayan ceramics turtles are flanked by the Popol Vuh hero twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who may also have jaguar-spotted skin. The maize hero or the personification of the Maize God, who carries baskets full of maize, emerges from a cracked turtle shell (pic 10). For this reason, the “earth turtle” is often found in iconography linked to the agrarian cycle renewal and to the resurrection of the young Maize God. During the new harvest, the maize sprout must “hatch” from inside the hard skin of the kernel (pericarp) and “break” to the surface of the earth to become humans’ sustenance, just as baby turtles hatch from eggs and reach the earth’s surface.

Pic 9: Water lily growing from a skull; the flower is on the left and the leaf is on the right. Late Classic Mayan Vessel, K5961 (Zender, 2005: fig. 3a after Kerr © (top); Nymphaea ampla (White water lily) (bottom)

Regarding its glyphic use, Mayan writing used two turtle signs as logograms (word-sign): MAHK “shell” and “cover” (pic 11, left) and AHK “turtle” (pic 11, right). Nahuatl writing also used the AYOTL “turtle” logogram. During the early colonial decades, the Huexotzincas of the Puebla-Tlaxcala region transformed the turtle logogram into YAOTL “enemy”, “opposite enemy”, “combat”, using various motifs such as those shown before (pic 12). The reason for this change was to avoid the polysemy of the indigenous shields - chimalli - using the turtle (or its shell) by phonetic approximation and due to its shape similarity with an “adarga”, a leather shield of Hispanic-Moorish origins used in Spanish colonisation.

Pic 11: Mayan turtle logograms (Zender, 2005: fig. 1). MAHK “carapace” and “cover” (L); AHK “turtle” (R)

BIBLIOGRAFY -
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• ZENDER, Marc (2005), “Teasing the Turtle from its Shell: AHK and MAHK in Maya Writing”, The PARI Journal, vol. 6, issue 3: 1-14. Available at: https://www.mesoweb.com/pari/publications/journal/603/Turtle.pdf

Pic 13: An adarga-chimalli shield made by amantecas for King Philip II of Spain representing most famous Spanish battles against Muslims (Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212; Capitulation of Granada, 1492; Conquest of Tunis, 1535; Battle of Lepanto, 1571)