cuauh=bosque? - Cuauhnahuac

Thu Sep 30 01:21:17 UTC 2004

Thank you. I need to spend more time looking at place name 
glyphs.

Looking again at the detail in the painting that seems to be 
an imitation of one in the Vienna Codex, it looks as though 
when I cut off the tree to make a detail photo I may have 
been cutting off part of the glyph.

There's actually a logical reason not to draw an eagle, 
which is that European artists often didn't distinguish 
eagles from pelicans, at least in emblems and emblem-
like paintings. There's an example of a pelican that looks 
like an eagle in a mural at Malinalco, copied from some 
European prototype.

There's another detail in the painting that I've just noticed 
might relate to "falling wood." The drawings by Cristophe 
Weiditz of Indians in Spain include three of a person 
juggling a wood block with his feet. (The caption specifies 
that it's a wood block.) He's throwing it up in the air and 
catching it, and if he didn't catch it he would be hit by the 
falling wood. In the painted triptych, there's a person 
holding up a bird or with a bird that just landed on his 
foot, in what looks like a less hazardous version of the 
same game. So it looks as though there's a pun in there 
somewhere, maybe instigated by a Nahuatl speaker?
(cuauh temoc jugglers.jpg)

Substituting a bird for the wood might have been an 
embellishment by the European artist, who tended to 
overdo things and make everything complicated, 
but I wonder if there was a Nahuatl pun to start with.
In other words if someone asked the person juggling 
the wood block what the game was about, he might 
have said "cuauh temoc." 

If the pronunciation isn't so different that it would 
cross the line separating a bad pun from an 
unintelligible pun, it might verify that the person in 
the famous drawing was a Nahuatl speaker.

Also now that I look for it there's a lot of falling 
wood in the triptych, for instance a table that was 
knocked over.

Susan Gilchrist

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Galen Brokaw brokaw at buffalo.edu
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 09:25:48 -0400
To: sfargo at earthlink.net, NAHUAT-L at LISTS.UMN.EDU
Subject: Re: cuauh=bosque?

Susan,
I'm not sure I understand your question, and I have no idea how that 
image of the painting relates to what you are talking about. But as you 
probably know the word for eagle is cua:uhtli and the word for wood or 
tree is cuahuitl. So "cuauh" can mean "bosque." When you use the roots 
of these words in combination with something else they become "cua:uh" 
and "cuauh". So if you don't distinguish orthographically between vowel 
length, there is no difference between the two. There is a glyph used to 
represent "tree" or "forest," which consists of a tree.
The very well known place glpyh for Cuauhnahuac ("place near trees or 
forest"), for example, is a tree with a mouth out of which issues a 
speech volute. The "cuauh" of course is for cuahuitl and the mouth and 
speech volute is a rebus element that puns on the relationship between 
"nahuac" which means "near" and "nahuatl" meaning "clear speech."
And the name glyph of the eagle facing down refers to the meaning of 
Cuauhtemoc as "descending eagle" from the combination of "cua:uhtli" and 
the verb "temo" which means to descend.
So, anyway, the wood glyph would theoretically be available as a rebus 
pun on "cua:uhtli", but there wouldn't really seem to be a need to use 
it that way, because it would be just as easy to draw an eagle.
I'm not aware of any glyphs that use the wood glyph in this way, and I 
wouldn't expect to find any. But I haven't studied such glyphs in any 
kind of extensively systematic way, so I can't say for sure.
Hope this helps.
Galen

sfargo at earthlink.net wrote:
> Still trying to untangle how the name Hieronymus Bosch turned 
> into Geronimo Bosco and El Bosco in Spain.
> 
> According to my interpretation of El Jardín de las Delicias (which 
> I'm calling La Bariedad del Mundo following an old inventory), a 
> person in the center is Cuauhtémoc, since the mini-scene 
> represents the year 7-Calli (ld 7-house.jpg). The 7 is shown by 
> someone (I suppose Cortes) poking 7 fingers at him, and the 
> jar is a house by analogy to pictures of Diogenes who lived in 
> a barrel. The bird with human feet underneath is an eccentric 
> version of the name glyph (cuauhtemoc.jpg).
> 
> But there seem to be all kinds of contexts where cuauh has 
> something to do with trees or wood or a forest. Is there any 
> connection to the name Cuauhtémoc? Is there another glyph 
> besides the eagle that could represent cuauh in the sense of 
> wood or trees?
> 
> In other words I wonder if there's any sign in the detail from the 
> painting (ld 7-house.jpg) that the artist knew that cuauh could 
> also mean wood or trees. It would imply that someone was 
> explaining more than just glyphs for 1-acatl to 10-tecpatl, a 
> personal name, and a couple of place names, maybe showing 
> how picture writing can distinguish between words that sound 
> the same? 
> Susan Gilchrist
> 
> 
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