Campana (CST21)
This painting of the simplex glyph for the term campana (a Spanish loanword that was taken into Nahuatl) shows a large church bell in a dark gray color. It has a cross (+) carved into it; this cross is standing on a stepped platform. The bell has a loop at the top for hanging it above or near the church (but the tall church towers that are so visible today in Mexican pueblos tended to come from later in the colonial period).
Stephanie Wood
Simón de Buenaventura, the bellmaker and seemingly a Spaniard, made this bell, which cost 744 pesos (as the transcription and translation by Kevin Terraciano, Codex Sierra, 2012, indicates). The town also had to pay for his food (22 pesos) while he made the bell, and cover the cost of the metal (57 pesos). Such a bell could be a town’s pride and joy. Prior to contact, Nahuas had metal bells for dancing. Most were made of copper, some were gold. They were called coyolli and oyohualli. They had clappers and slits for the sound to escape. The personal names Tzilin, Tlatzilini, and Tzitzili came from the verb, tzilini and tzilinia, for a bell to ring, or the more active, to ring a bell. The name Tlalala seems to be an onomatopoetic representation of the sound of ringing. See some examples below.
Stephanie Wood
1550–1564
Jeff Haskett-Wood
campanas, iglesias
campana, church bell (a Spanish loanword that entered Nahuatl), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/campana
campana
Stephanie Wood
Códice Sierra-Texupan, plate 21, page dated 1558. 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.
