Ometeotl

[rick dosan]

There's an article by Richard Haly called "Bare Bones: Rethinking Moesoamerican Divinity" in which he suggests that Ometeotl is a God of Bones.   And an article by Una Canger and Karen Dakin from Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, Oct. 1985, that says that according to the region, the word Bone could be Ometl, or Omitl. 

--- On Fri, 4/17/09, Campbell, R. Joe <campbel at indiana.edu> wrote:


From: Campbell, R. Joe <campbel at indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: [Nahuat-l] Ometeotl
To: "Iván Pedroza" <ipedrozar at gmail.com>
Cc: nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
Date: Friday, April 17, 2009, 8:21 PM


Pedro,

   Things are frequently not as simple as we think they are... or wish
they were.  If they were, I might be a chemist.  But I'm glad I'm not.
I wouldn't have missed Nahuatl (and Nahuat-l) for anything.

   When we find that morphemes have variant forms, it is natural to
wonder if a particular form isn't connected with a particular "meaning
unit" (i.e., morpheme) that we are familiar with.  If we are going to
entertain the possibility of that connection, we are frequently faced
the necessity of building "semantic bridges" between the basic
meanings of forms and the meanings of other forms (usually in
combination with others.

   An example:

   1) When I started the English translation and morphological
analysis of Molina's 1571 Nahuatl-Spanish dictionary in about 1970, I
hadn't read Carochi -- and Andrews' and Karttunen's works were still
in the future.
   I looked at Molina's entry:
     Atlacatl. marinero , o mal hombre.

   The first part looked obvious... ("if Nahuatl morphology is *this*
simple..." I thought).
  "a(tl)" = 'water' + "tlaca(tl)" = 'person, man' == "a-tlaca(tl)" --
'water-man, sailor'.
   But the second Spanish gloss made me pause -- what was bad about
sailors?  And then I remembered reading that the people who took their
dugout canoes around the canals of central Mexico, peddling fruit,
vegetables, and game, sometimes left the people at their stopping
place less than pleased with their behavior.  That seemed like a
satisfactory semantic bridge to me.  So the behavior of water-persons
was a likely explanation for the extended meaning, even though there
is nothing inherent in 'water' or "atl" that hints at evil or bad
behavior.

   Years later, I benefitted from Carochi, Andrews, and Karttunen,
and learned that "a:tl" has a long vowel, and that the initial
element of "the other meaning" not only has a short vowel, but a
glottal stop as well --"ah-".  Or, "ah-" 'not' + "tlacatl" 'person,
human' = 'not human, bad'.  (It can be noted that I still don't
always write vowel length, but at least now, I admit it.)


   The moral of the story is that all that seems simple may not be.
...and that there is always more to know.

................

   On the issue of "ometeotl", I would first suggest that it may not
be a single word, maybe a two word phrase.  There are other apparent
words might deceive us:

     coatlicue    name of a divinity
really: coatl i-cue  (her skirt is snakes)

     Coatlichan   name of a town
really  coatl i-chan (snake's house)

     Atlihuetzia  name of a town (in Tlaxcala)
really  atl i-huetziya(n)  (water's falling place -- waterfall)

.............................

   On the issue of the vowel dropping behavior of "o:me" and "e:yi",
the facts just don't support a simple "they drop their final vowels
before X" statement.

   "e:yi" obeys the general rule that "y" usually drops in direct
contact with "i", as in "ayi, celiya, chichiya, chiya,
ciyacatl, ihcuiya, piya, etc."   It happens too after the other
front vowel "e", but not with such regularity: "ceya, meya".
So "eyi" shows up frequently as "ei".

   As Ivan and Mario recently pointed out, when "y" occurs in final
position, it changes to "x" ('sh'):

   castolcan omexcan         in eighteen places
   cempoalpa omexpa.         twenty-three times
   chicuexpa.                eight times
   excampa nacaceh           triangular

   Sometimes "yi" deletes and leaves only the "e" segment:

   epantli.                  three rows
   oc epoalcan               in another sixty places
   epoalilhuitl              sixty days


   Given this kind of variation, I would hesitate to identify any
"e", "ex", or "ei" as a token of "eyi".  And even more, I would walk
with great trepidation with regard to making a statement about the
worldview of a culture on the basis of such an identification.

Iztayomeh,

Joe

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