The ‘bottom’ line in codex writing

Nahuatl, both written and spoken, is what’s called an ‘agglutinative’ language, that is, it contains many words that are combinations of two or more shorter words ‘glued together’ to form new ones. Many languages around the world are agglutinative - English isn’t one of them. Yet we love using the idea of agglutination in linguistic puzzles, such as the ‘rebus’ principle, where ‘a pictographic symbol represents not the idea it depicts but the sound associated with that idea’ (Robinson). We’ve given the simplest possible example in Picture 1 (top), where the picture of a bean is used to represent the sound of the word ‘been’. In fact, the idea is ancient: Egyptian hieroglyphs are full of rebuses, and they were popular during the Middle Ages for representing heraldic names: Bishop Hugh Oldham, for example, used an an owl plus the letters ‘dom’ to depict ‘Oldham’ in his chantry in Exeter Cathedral (pic 1, bottom).

Pic 1: Examples of the rebus principle

Scholars have found over 700 examples of place, personal name and other phonetic signs in the Codex Mendoza, the commonest consisting precisely of locative suffixes such as the one above (Nicholson). Numerous amongst these is a category incorporating the glyph for a human bottom, or tzin(tli) in Nahuatl. We’ve put together 15 of them in picture 3. The reason? tzin(tli) SOUNDS very similar to the Nahuatl suffix -tzin, a special term with a variety of meanings, most of which are common. It’s a ‘reverential’ or ‘honorific’ term (Lockhart); it can be a diminutive, but which also denotes respect and affection (Robelo); it can mean base or foundation (Karttunen); it can even mean fear (Montemayor); and it also means ‘bum’! In terms of place names, it’s very commonly found with an additional locative suffix -co meaning ‘place’. Hence many place names in Nahuatl end in -tzinco.

Pic 3: Examples of place glyphs in the Codex Mendoza incorporating the human bottom glyph ‘tzin(tli)’

At the same time, scholarly interpretations of place names can vary. Robelo, for instance, opts for -tzin denoting a diminutive, ie ‘Little Tullan’, arguing that the Nahua people added the diminutive in cases of ’pueblos nuevos, en memoria de otros que habían abandonado, o que tenían semejanza con aquellos.’ This is supported by Lockhart:-
’With place names, -tzinco has actual locative meaning and also is not reverential, but indicates a settlement named after another, usually being smaller than the parent community and sometimes close to it.’ Both scholars stress that the original and oldest meaning of this particular suffix was precisely as a diminutive.
However this debate is irrelevant to the main focus of this little article, which relates to the curious use of the human posterior glyph as a PREFIX in a personal name sign (pic 5, lower) as opposed to its ubiquitous use as a SUFFIX (pic 5, upper) - whether as part of a personal or a place name sign.
The individual named in the top of Picture 5 is called Cuauhtlehuanitzin. It consists of two glyphs: cuauhtli (eagle) and tzintli (human posterior) giving Cuauhtlitzin(tli), which is close to the sound of the glossed name Cuauhtlehuanitzin (‘Great Ascending Eagle’). The -tzintli operates phonetically - as a rebus - to convey the sound of the reverential suffix -tzin (‘great’).

Pic 5: The two examples of personal name glyphs incorporating the buttocks in the Urrutia de Vergara Family Papers document, above

No doubt about that! But this resonates with a little-known aspect of Aztec society, the ‘last resort’ use in warfare of women exposing themselves to the enemy in an attempt to shame, defy and mock them. This has been thoroughly documented by at least four leading scholars of the Mexica: Cecelia Klein, Louise Burkhart, Camilla Townsend and Lisa Sousa. ‘Mooning’ your enemy may have a long history - certainly going back at least to the Middle Ages in Europe - but, as Klein writes ‘For no other culture than the Aztec... have I found a story of naked, obscene women, who fight with their own body parts and excretions, having been sent into battle.’ And it goes beyond a simple ‘insulting gesture’.
Whilst there are records of individual female rulers and ruler/warriors - such as the famed Mixtec leader 6-Monkey who can be seen here (picture 7) carrying a shield and taking a captive - thanks to a couple of references in pre-invasion Nahua annals from Central Mexico, and the writings of chroniclers such as Durán and Tezozomoc, we now know that group involvement of women in battles, whilst rare, was ‘something culturally appropriate for their women to do in moments of extremity’ (Townsend).

Pic 7: 6-Monkey leads conquests of other Mixtec communities; Codex Selden (Añute) pl. 8 (detail)

Virtually all these missiles have to be understood as ‘supremely feminine symbols, sweeping, spinning and weaving having been exclusively female tasks in prehispanic Central Mexico’ (Klein). The same tactics were employed in desperation by the last of Cuauhtémoc’s forces against the Spanish and their allies: Fray Diego Durán records women being ordered onto the rooftops: ‘Early in the morning, the women ascended to the flat roofs of the houses where they made signs of scorn to the Spaniards’. The women refused to surrender and apparently raised their skirts ‘so that they could give pursuit’ (Sousa).
In her in-depth study of Gender and War in Aztec Mexico, Klein suggests that part of the aggression in the women warriors was directed at protecting their menfolk, rather than contesting their power. Spindle whorls were ‘metaphorical shields’. Female organs were associated with shields, and childbirth itself was likened to fighting a battle.

Pic 9: Tlatelolcan women expose themselves and hurl domestic ‘weapons’ at their Mexica enemy; Códice Durán fol. 11a