Article suitable for older students

‘Codex Corner’: punning with glyphs

13th Dec 2021

Elvis Preslsy’s original blue suede shoes

Elvis’s famous dark blue suede shoes (right) - the only pair he ever wore - sold for $75,000 in 2013, an iconic reminder of just how precious they had been to the singer. Few will be aware that one of the founding fathers of the city-state of Tenochtitlan was called ‘He’s Got Turquoise Sandals’. His name is clearly readable from the blue-painted shoe glyph attached to his figure. Even fewer will know that Mexica (Aztec) scribes used the colour turquoise to draw visual puns: here is an example that plays with the multiple meanings of the Nahuatl term xiuh (pronounced ‘shoe’!)... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore).

Xiuh, derived from xi(h)ui(tl), can mean turquoise or greenstone, but also year, (new, ie annual) grass, and comet. It also has associations with fire - perhaps reflective of the blue element in some flames - as in the name of the god of fire Xiuhtecuhtli. In the case of the Mexica noble Xiuhcaque (pic 1) his name is straightforward to read ‘logographically’ (ie as word signs) consisting of xiuh (turquoise or blue) and cac(tli) (sandal). In terms of names, however, he has an interesting counterpart, explains Gordon Whittaker in his highly recommended new book Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs -
’A noble with virtually the same name, Xiuhcactli (“Turquoise Sandals”), is listed in the land registry of the Codex Cozcatzin (pic 2). This time, instead of blue footwear we see a generic sandal (cac-), beneath which a sheaf of herbal grass (xiuh-), distinguished by its turquoise colour (again xiuh-).

‘... But there is more to this [straightforward reading of his name glyph] than meets the eye. The herbs are phonetic and yet their colour is logographic, so the very same sign has two functions at once’ - what Whittaker calls, in technical jargon, ‘graphic syllepsis’. In other words, the sign for grass reinforces and conveys the idea of turquoise in two ways, through the word xiuh and in being painted blue. Clever!
What we haven’t mentioned so far is the notion that anything turquoise by definition must be precious. These aren’t any old sandals, they’re turquoise sandals! Sandals were very much part of a strict Mexica dress code: commoners generally weren’t allowed to wear them, except when travelling on highways, and if they did wear them, they would be plain ones, made of woven reeds.
Warriors could wear (plain white) sandals into battle, but only if they’d captured more than two enemy warriors.

By contrast, posh leather sandals were only for the likes of rulers, nobles and high priests, and even they had to remove them when in audience with the emperor. One of the punishments meted out on wayward nobles was taking away the right to wear sandals...
Significantly, ‘the sandals of the Aztecs’ much-revered predecessors, the Toltecs, are reported to have been painted sky blue, an esteemed colour’ (Berdan & Anawalt, 1992: 2, 816).

Sources/references:-
• Whittaker, Gordon (2021): Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs: A Guide to Nahuatl Writing, University of California Press
• Berdan, Frances & Anawalt, Patricia Rieff (1992): The Codex Mendoza, vol. 2 ‘Description of the Codex Mendoza’, University of California Press.

Picture sources:-
• Main: photo downloaded from https://www.julienslive.com/lot-details/index/catalog/110/lot/46990
• Pic 1: image from the Codex Mendoza (original in the Bodleian Library, Oxford), scanned from our own copy of the James Cooper Clark facsimile edition, London, 1938
• Pic 2: image downloaded from https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8452823t/f10.item
• Pic 3 (top): image from the Florentine Codex (original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence) scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994; (bottom) photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore.