Yaotl (MH514r)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Yaotl ("The Combatant"), which is attested here as a man's name, consists of a frontal view of a war (yaoyotl) shield that serves as a turtle's back. In a bird's eye view of the turtle (ayotl), the head, tail, and legs stick out from underneath the shield, with the head pointed upward. The pattern on the shield is a lattice-worth pattern of diamond shapes with dots in the middle. The shape of the shield is similar to a European crest. Indigenous shields were historically round with feathers coming off the bottom. The diamond patterns of the turtle shell are reminiscent of the some of the shields--those that have the X division. See also the work of Lisardo Pérez Lugones for a discussion of the turtle-shield.
Stephanie Wood
The ayotl is a phonetic complement for the desired reading of yaotl, which derives from the war shield. Perhaps the turtle is there to remind the viewer that the desired reading of the shield is not "chimalli" (the word for a war shield). The shield, however, can serve as an logogram for warfare (yaoyotl), close in sound to yaotl and derived from it. This combination of signs recurs in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco, athough there are some that are simply war shields without the turtle underneath. Ayotl and yaotl are near homophones.
Also worth noting is how the turtle shell (carapacho, in Spanish) served as a percussion instrument. The Museo de Sitio de Tlatelolco (2012, 259) provides an excellent example of one of these turtle-shell drums. This may underline another connection between the turtle and warfare.
Stephanie Wood
Sancho yaotl
Sancho Yaotl
Stephanie Wood
1560
shields, crests, escudos, tortugas
yao(tl), enemy, combatant, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/yaotl
yaoyo(tl), war, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/yaoyotl
El Combatiente
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 514r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=107&st=image
This manuscript is hosted by the Library of Congress and the World Digital Library; used here with the Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SAq 3.0).
