totolin (CST3)
This is a painting of the simplex glyph for the term totolin (turkey, domestic fowl). The animal is shown in a profile view, facing toward the viewer’s left. Its snood is tan colored, and its wattle or caruncles are red. The wing and tail feathers are visible, but no legs or feet are shown.
Stephanie Wood
The turkey hen could be called totolin or cihuatotolin. Alexander von Humboldt wrote: "New Spain has supplied Europe with the largest and most useful of domestic gallinaceous birds, the turkey (totolin or huexolotl) which was formerly found wild on the back of the Cordilleras, from the Isthmus of Panama to New England" (Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, vol. 3, p. 55, of 1811).
Compare the red and turquoise details of the head of this turkey cock with this open-source photograph. When one thinks about how these colors were valued in Aztec culture, one can understand the attraction to this bird, not to mention the attraction to its food value. For more on the Codex Sierra, see Kevin Terraciano’s study (2021).
Stephanie Wood
1550–1564
Jeff Haskett-Wood
pavos, guajolotes, feathers, plumas
totol(in), turkey, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/totolin
guajolote
Stephanie Wood
Códice Sierra-Texupan, plate 3, page dated 1551. 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. 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.
