tepoztli (CST16)
This painting of the simplex glyph for the term tepoztli (ax) shows a metal tool with a red handle. It has both a triangular blade on the right and a curving blade on the left. The blade is a dark gray, which suggests that it is iron. This combination is connected to the handle.
Stephanie Wood
Tepoztli usually meant copper in the autonomous era, but it came to mean metal in general, and then lent itself to metals introduced by Europeans. The triangular ax was a pre-contact shape, whereas the curving blade seems European influenced. The curving blade is somewhat closer to the machete, a tool that survives still today in Mexico. The red handle here also seems to be a European-influenced innovation, too. For more on the Codex Sierra, see Kevin Terraciano’s study (2021).
Stephanie Wood
1550–1564
Jeff Haskett-Wood
hachas, metales, madera
tepoz(tli), an ax or hatchet, copper, iron, or metal, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tepoztli
hacha
Stephanie Wood
Códice Sierra-Texupan, plate 16, page dated 1555. 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=sear...
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.
