ome posesiones (CST34)
This painting of the simplex glyph for the expression ome posesiones (two documents showing possession of land) literally shows two rectangles of paper, side by side, representing these legal documents. One could imagine one piece of paper with a counter for two, but instead each document is represented separately. Each one has a symbolic two horizontal rows of what appears to suggest alphabetic writing. The contextualizing image shows an escribano (Spanish for notary or scribe and a loanword taken into Nahuatl) pointing to the two documents. His pointing may suggest the authority embedded in these documents. A similar authority seems invested in the pointing finger of the pilli that appears elsewhere on this page. The escribano is named Marcos Francisco de Esquivel. His hat, long beard, and red coat suggest he is a Spaniard, and therefore a notary from the colonial government.
Stephanie Wood
For more on the Codex Sierra, see Kevin Terraciano’s study (2021).
Stephanie Wood
1550–1564
Jeff Haskett-Wood
documentos, papeles, tierras, tenencia, rectángulos, escrituras, alfabeto
ome, two, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ome
posesión, document showing legal possession of land, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/posesion
dos posesiones
Stephanie Wood
Códice Sierra-Texupan, plate 34, page dated 1560. Origin: Santa Catalina Texupan, Mixteca Alta, State of Oaxaca. Kevin Terraciano has published an outstanding study of this manuscript (Codex Sierra, 2021), and in his book he refers to alphabetic and “pictorial” writing, not hieroglyphic writing. We are still counting some of the imagery from this source as hieroglyphic writing, but we are also including examples of “iconography” where the images verge on European style illustrations or scenes showing activities. We have this iconography category so that such images can be fruitfully compared with hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphic writing was evolving as a result of the influence of European illustrations, and even alphabetic writing impacted it.
https://bidilaf.buap.mx/objeto.xql?id=48281&busqueda=Texupan&action=search
The Biblioteca Digital Lafragua of the Biblioteca Histórica José María Lafragua in Puebla, Mexico, publishes this Códice Sierra-Texupan, 1550–1564 (62pp., 30.7 x 21.8 cm.), referring to it as being in the “Public Domain.” This image is published here under a Creative Commons license, asking that you cite the Biblioteca Digital Lafragua and this Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs.
