For the past 25 years, scholars have discussed the nature of the writing systems of central Mexico; the debate has involved many different voices with very different scholarly backgrounds and methodological and theoretical viewpoints. The contributors to the present volume approach Aztec writing, calendrical signs, and iconography from a perspective that downplays its logophonetic character and introduces the controversial concept of semasiography—a non-glottographic system, without recourse to any spoken language and thus allegedly intelligible across linguistic borders. Although the editors hope to integrate semasiography as a cornerstone concept for future work, there is no agreement among the contributors as to how to define and use the term. In fact, several chapters do not mention semasiography at all. One also senses some preconceived notions toward those skeptical of that concept, as when Jerome Offner refers to scholars “using the presence of glottographic signs as a key indicator to classify writing systems based on Western preference for those who write like us” (p. 186). Yet glottographic interpretations have nothing to do with Western bias, but with solid and well-established categories in grammatology, and they are formulated based on insights from cross-cultural studies of writing, including the deciphered Maya script.
In the introduction, Katarzyna Mikulska lays out the background for the volume's 13 chapters, which are organized into four sections. She discusses iconography (but not iconology, only briefly referring to the seminal work by Erwin Panofsky) and, after outlining perceived inadequacies, opts for semasiography. Several questions remain, the most fundamental being the following: What distinguishes conventionalized images in iconographic compositions from semasiography? What makes indigenous images of the Americas so special that they require a new terminology and theory? Christopher Donnan and Jeffrey Quilter previously explored the narrative potential of Moche images, but their important contributions are ignored. It is also disturbing to see Maya writing characterized as a script that records “different types of names” (p. 6), when Maya hieroglyphic texts are known to express nearly all aspects of Classic Mayan language, including nouns, verbs, and adjectives. One wonders about the contributors’ degree of familiarity with Maya writing.
David Charles Wright-Carr's chapter focuses on the Codex Huichapan as a starting point to discuss “pictorial writing of Central Mexico,” defined as a “blurry border” between writing and art. Most epigraphers will disagree with this definition and with the author's application of the term “semasiograph” to logographic signs used for calendrical units and numerals. For Wright-Carr, these are all “ideas” communicated by semasiographs. That a sign could be read by Nahuatl and Otomi speakers does not make it less tied to a specific language. Although Aztec glyphic compounds in the Codex Huichapan may have Otomi annotations in Latin letters, this does not mean that the glyphs could be read productively in Otomi. The codex is better described as written in the Aztec script, hence reflecting Nahuatl. The author refers to recent advances in the decipherment of Aztec writing as misguided “exaggerations of the glottographic nature.” Such generalizations are hard to take seriously without concrete examples or careful refutations.
Mikulska next explores how the concept of semasiography may be applied to central Mexican divinatory codices. She notes how a ritual specialist would verbalize a given graphic expression, allowing a variety of interpretations (p. 55). She uses Aztec literary sources in her admittedly “completely hypothetical verbalizations” and further acknowledges that, in the cases where examples of homophony appear, the best (re)construction would be done in that language. In other words, intimate references to a specific language are present, embedded in the imagery, and therefore could not be accessed equally well by readers unfamiliar with Nahuatl, making the whole notion of translinguistic readings doubtful. With the exception of Offner's chapter on the Codex Xolotl, the chapters in Section 2 do little to exemplify what semasiography might be. Angélica Baena Ramírez's study of sacrificial scenes in the Codex Borgia is a traditional study of “images, writing, and a notational system.” Loïc Vauzelle claims to “explore whether it is possible to talk about semasiography in the case of the gods’ costumes” (p. 155), but fails, except for declaring that the gods’ costumes can “be considered semasiographic as they convey messages and meanings in a visual way” (p. 174)—a statement that holds for nearly all images. Vauzelle erroneously designates Aztec logograms (like CHAL and AYAW) as syllables. Although some of the examples illustrate the integration of Aztec signs within the iconography, there is no reference to Janet Berlo's seminal work on embedded texts in Mesoamerica. Daniele Dehouve's discussion of Aztec ritual language and the principle of metonymic series (Chapter 3) is well argued, and she shows that certain forms of expressions existed in oral, theatrical, and representational forms, but she does not enter into the issues of writing and semasiography. Katarzyna Szoblik's contribution on traces of orality in the Codex Xolotl notes that several individuals are accompanied by chains of glyphs “that indicate thoughts, words, and dreams of the characters” (p. 221). Why do we not hear more about these glyphic expressions? And how does Szoblik know that they communicate “thoughts and dreams”?
In his chapter, Offner seeks to distance his approach to the Codex Xolotl from the traditional writing–iconography distinction, attempting to employ semasiography as a useful tool. However, after a tirade against unnamed scholars, he merely rephrases work by Elizabeth Boone and Mikulska, noting that iconic semasiography conveys meaning through “the relationship between a picture/icon and what it is meant to represent” (p. 182). Why this is not iconography/iconology in the Panofskian manner is not evident. Remarks like “the mere presence of elements of glottographic writing does not render a system a glottographic writing system” (p. 185) not only stand in sharp contrast to Whittaker's later chapter but also reveal a lack of familiarity with other Mesoamerican writing systems. Offner considers selected narrative scenes from the Codex Xolotl and reaches conclusions like “Cihuacuecuenotzin's name glyph contains the glyph representing Itzcuintlatlaccas's report, which, in turn, serves as a summing up of his situation” (p. 196). What is writing, iconography, or semasiography versus what is Offner's imagination is left for the reader to decipher. He finally claims that the Nahuatl graphic communication system was based on an overall semasiographic operating principle, with “minor glottographic features.”
In Section 3, chapters by Christiane Clados (Chapter 8) and Janusz Wolozyn (Chapter 10) bring the Andean culture area into the discussion. Clados presents a selection of stylized and abstracted Inca tocapu motifs and “framed motif units” from earlier cultures. She aims to employ Panofsky's iconographic method, but it is unclear exactly how she does so. She calls for a new methodology to approach the “abstract” motifs, but it does not appear to be semasiography, which is entirely omitted. Wolozyn provides a brief overview of status markers in Moche iconography (no semasiography here, either). In his chapter, Stanislaw Iwaniszewski explores how “we can approach rock art as a kind of visual and graphic form of communication from a semasiographic perspective” (p. 258). His examples are from northeastern Mexico and Baja California and focus on different forms of headdresses. Iwaniszewski concludes that this “kind of pictography has the possibility of conveying phonetic values . . . and thus enable their spoken identification” (p. 267), but the reader is left wondering whether the contributors share kindred definitions of writing, iconography, and semasiography.
Section 4 offers views on Aztec writing, first by Gordon Whittaker in a brief but coherent chapter on the interplay of writing and iconography, or embedded texts (with another omission of Berlo's work). Whittaker, who does not seem to be adhering to the idea of semasiography, instead shows how Aztec logograms are frequently and unproblematically incorporated into iconography because of their high degree of iconicity. Juan José Batalla Rosado and Miguel Ángel Ruz Barrio present their research on name glyphs in the Libro de los Tributos de San Pablo Teocaltitlan, a fascinating sixteenth-century document from Mexico City. They focus on how Nahua scribes sought to write new and unfamiliar Spanish names in Nahuatl script. The authors refer to CAL and TOS as syllabic signs (in fact, they are logograms). They do not refer to more recent studies of Aztec writing as a logophonetic writing system, raising suspicions as to whether they are familiar with that script's basic principles.
The final chapter is perhaps the most thought provoking, but it has nothing to say about semasiography. Instead, Michel Oudijk meticulously outlines, in a very direct critique, how an academic myth has evolved over the past 30 years; specifically, Michel Graulich's “transgression model” of central Mexican creation mythology and later expansions of the idea by Alfredo López Austin. Oudijk exposes methodological flaws and Christian themes that have been ignored, as well as “academic houses of cards” like López Austin's idea of intertwined “cosmic flows” inside world trees.
All will agree that we must continue to develop new ways to understand the rich visual sources of the ancient Americas and to question “often too-resistant categories and boundaries of Western inquiry” (p. 16). The question here, however, is whether semasiography will bring us further in such efforts. What new knowledge and insights has it brought forth? In what way will new and poorly defined concepts help us understand ancient Mexican visual communication systems? Repeatedly, we are told that semasiographic expressions could be “read” by peoples of different linguistic groups, but where is the evidence? Most of the contributors use sixteenth-century Nahuatl sources to interpret and verbalize the imagery, thus relying on near-contemporary literary sources. This is exactly what Panofsky would do in his iconographic analysis. Surely, just as conventionalized pan-Mesoamerican motifs could work across language boundaries, so too could shared logograms be read in different tongues. The crux of the matter, however, is that references to language are often embedded in the imagery using the rebus principle, making it evident that the full content could only be grasped if the reader knew the relevant language.
It is deeply concerning that central contributions to the field are ignored throughout the volume and that Maya writing and iconography are left out of the discussion. From a Mesoamericanist perspective, these choices are regrettable and will deepen arbitrary divisions between western and eastern Mesoamerica and their scribal traditions. Offner's opinion is that “Western investigators continue to struggle with semasiography or deny its existence because of their own societies’ central investment in glottographic writing” (p. 186). I believe instead that many investigators, Western or otherwise, will continue to struggle with the term because it is not well defined and operationalized in a coherent and meaningful way.
In conclusion, if the intention of the volume was to clarify the definition of semasiography in Mesoamerica and beyond, the goal was not accomplished. Instead, we are left with a deep uncertainly as to what semasiography really is and how it can help us better understand Mesoamerican visual worlds.
