WI-TI-K(I)

The first syllabic sequence, wi-ti-k(i) (Figure 2b), also occurs at Copan (at least 20 times), Nimli Punit, and Quirigua, but in a very different context. Stuart and Houston (1994:23) note that its placement in these texts indicates that it is a toponym. In all but one example, k'uhul witik ajaw ‘holy witik ajaw’ (Copan, Altar Y), wi-ti-k(i) is preceded by a number 3 or 4. Its literal meaning remains uncertain. The fact that a word is used as a toponym does not in itself provide information about its semantic value, since many words other than geographic features can occur in place names: names for flora or fauna, directions, verbal phrases, and so on. In any case, there is no evidence to suggest that the toponym wi-ti-k(i) of Copan relates to the word spelled on the chocolate pot in a context that implies it somehow modifies the word cacao.

A Nahuatl root, witeki, is phonetically similar to wi-ti-k(i) and is also semantically appropriate to cacao preparation. Francis Karttunen (1983:90) lists 〈hui:tequ(i)〉 ‘to get whipped, to whip, beat someone; to thresh grain.’ In Fray Alonso de Molina's early Nahuatl dictionary, the same information is given in two separate entries, both transitive verbs; the first is 〈Vitequi.nite.〉 ‘herir, o castigar a otro (to wound, to punish someone).’ Note that Molina marks transitive verbs with nite to indicate that the direct object is human (ni- for first person; -te- for human object). This contrasts with nitla (ni-tla-) for non-human objects, as in the entry 〈Vitequi.nitla.〉 'desgranar semillas con varas o palos (to shell seeds with poles or sticks [to thresh])’ (Molina 1944 [1571]:157v). It is the second meaning, “to shell,” that may relate to cacao and to the spelling wi-ti-k(i). The word is still found in contemporary Nahuatl. For example, a dialect of Puebla has 〈quihuitequi〉 ‘pegar; rozar (to hit; to brush or rub against)’ (Brockway et al. 2000:132). After cacao seeds are roasted, the thin shells become brittle and are easily separated from the seeds. This step must be done before the seeds can be ground into powder. A Nahua interpretation provides the reading ta witik kakaw ‘for shelled/shelling cacao.’

KO-XO-M(A)

The second phrase begins with the syllabic spelling ko-xo-m(a) (Figure 2d). Several words in the Classic texts end with the suffix -om(a). Linguists have described the suffix variously as an agentive and as an indicator of a customary activity (see Fought 1972:45 for Ch'orti'; Barrera Vásquez et al. 1980:605 for Yukatek; and Kaufman 1971:58 for Tzeltal). All of the examples from the Classic texts occur on words that indicate people—those who customarily engage in a certain activity: ch'a-ho-m(a) ch'ahom(a) ‘incense offerer’ (Schele 1989); k'a-ya-m(a) k'ayom(a) ‘singer’ (Houston and Taube 2000:276); ka-yo-m(a) kayom(a) ‘fisherman’ (Palenque Creation Stone C1, C2); yu-ku-no-m(a) yuk(u)nom(a) ‘uniter/shaker?’ (e.g., Dos Pilas Hieroglyphic Stair 4 Step 3 H2); and a-äk'-no-m(a) äk'om(a) ‘dancer’ (Cancuen Panel E5). A noun naming a person would be quite unexpected in this part of the PSS. In addition, except as a bird species (guan), kox is not a word attested in published Yukatekan or Ch'olan sources. The adjective kox ‘lame; sprained; twisted’ found in Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Chuj, Jakaltek, Tojolab'al, and Mamean languages is generally identified as a loan from the Spanish cojo ‘lame’ (e.g., Kaufman 1969:170; Laughlin 1975:178; Maldonado Andrés et al. 1986:132).

A Yukatek word that is somewhat similar to the spelling ko-xo-m(a), kokox, is listed in the Motul dictionary as “cacao muy sazonado en el árbol [tree-ripened cacao]” (Martínez Hernández 1929:193[77r]). This word is unique to colonial Yukatek, and though its meaning fits the context, kokox differs significantly from the syllabic spelling.

Molina's colonial dictionary provides two Nahuatl entries that appear to be relevant. The first word, koxonqui 'cosa seca y muy molida (something dry and finely ground [powder])' (Molina 1944 [1571]:24v), is certainly appropriate for the ground cacao used in the preparation of the ceremonial drink. It does not, however, match the spelling as well as koxoni 'zonglotear, o baçucar la vasija (for a container to make a sloshing sound)' (Molina 1944[1571]:24v). This word fits well if it refers to the mixing of a beverage inside the lidded vessel. The first word, koxonqui, suggests the phrase, “for powdered cacao”; koxoni suggests the reading “for sloshing/shaking cacao.”

The final m in the syllabic spelling may reflect an assimilation of the n to the initial m of the following word, spelled mu-l(u). This phenomenon happened in English when the negative in ‘not’ became im before morphemes beginning with a bilabial consonant (e.g., immaterial and imperfect) and in rapid speech across word boundaries (e.g., when San Pedro is pronounced sampedro). The same process is seen in Yukatek Maya in colonial sources where the town and state known today as Campeche was earlier referred to as Canpeche. Similarly, koxon may have been pronounced koxom when followed immediately by mu-l(u). However, the difference between m and n (a bilabial and an alveolar point of articulation) may not be significant in light of the fact that this attestation of a possible loan word occurred more than 1,000 years before any Spanish record of Nahuatl, the Nahua language used as the source for this comparison.

MU-L(U)

The spelling mu-l(u) (Figure 2e) could represent mulul, a word found in some Mayan languages meaning ‘tecomate; jícara (calabash; gourd).’ The cognate murur is found in eastern Ch'olan (Cholti and Ch'orti'), but otherwise is—today, at least—limited to eastern Mayan languages such as K'ichean, Mam, Ixil. However, if the word mulul ‘calabash’ were to have been written in this text, one would expect it to occur earlier in the PSS, where the name of the type of vessel is indicated, not in a subordinate phrase beginning with ta and directly preceding, and presumably modifying, the word kakaw. Two Nahua words, each with very different meanings, offer more acceptable possibilities.

One is mulu, meaning “finely ground powder.” The similarity to the Spanish word moler ‘to grind’ may be a coincidence, though it may have been an early borrowing from Spanish. A more likely source for mu-l(u) is mole (〈molle〉 or 〈mulli〉 ‘salsa, guiso, potaje [sauce, stew, soup]’ (Siméon 1977 [1885]), from which the Spanish word mole is derived. The word mole can be reconstructed in both proto-Nahua, *mole ‘hervir, esponjar [to boil; to bubble]’ (Dakin 1982:152), and proto-Uto-Aztecan *mo:la ‘hervir, espumar [to boil; to foam]’ (Dakin 1982:121). As a noun in Nahuatl today, moli or mo:lli refers generally to a cooked liquid (gravy, sauce, soup, beverage; see, e.g., Brockway et al. 2000:88; Lastra de Suárez 1980:138), more specifically, to one containing chocolate and chilies. The mu-l(u) spelling can be explained in several ways. First, o/u vary allophonically in contemporary Nahuatl dialects (Lastra de Suárez 1986:25–29), with u more likely before l (Jane Hill, personal communication 2005). Or the Maya might simply have borrowed the word from a language variety in which *o is always realized as u—for example, in Pipil, as in mulu:ni ‘to boil’ (Dakin 1982:152). Another possibility is that the Maya borrowed o as u in the same way that later Mayan speakers did in several loans from Spanish: Ch'ol murux ‘curly haired’ < Moros ‘Moors,’ kumale < comadre, and axux < ajo(s) ‘garlic.’ The o > u sound change is not, however, reflected in ko-xo-m(a) (nor is it universal in all Ch'ol loans from Spanish).

Table 1 summarizes these terms discussed. A few syllable sequences resembling Nahua words could easily be attributed to chance. The Río Azul text, however, contains four spellings of words that appear to have been borrowed from a Nahua language: wi-ti-k(i), ko-xo-m(a), mu-l(u), and ka-ka-w(a). It is highly unlikely that chance could account for these words appearing together in a context completely appropriate to their meaning. Although the earliest alphabetic attestations of these Nahua words come more than a thousand years later, from the mid-sixteenth century, the lexemes presented here are not hypothetical linguistic reconstructions. They are identical to, or nearly identical to, words found in colonial and contemporary Nahua languages. Since these words appear in a text that is identifiable in every other respect as Mayan, specifically Ch'olan, it can be surmised that they are foreign words borrowed into the Mayan language. The meaning of these terms in Nahua languages is entirely appropriate to the context of a cacao vessel. Threshing/shelling, sloshing/shaking, and foaming/boiling/bubbling are all recognized steps in Mesoamerican cacao preparation (Coe and Coe 1996:64–66).

Transcription of the contents portion of the text.

Additional evidence that the glyphic sequence on the lid of the chocolate pot contains words considered by the scribe to be foreign or borrowed comes from the fact that none of the individual signs in the six-glyph sequence represents a consonant–vowel–consonant (CVC) morpheme typical of Maya verb and noun roots. None of the signs are logographs. All of them are either consonant–vowel (CV) syllabic signs or, in the case of u and ta, signs that can represent either syllables or grammatical morphemes (the “double” sign composed of two small dots is a function sign that is not read as either a syllablic sign or as a word sign). Maya writing is an example of a mixed logographic syllabic script, and it is highly unusual to find a sequence of six glyphs blocks containing only CV signs.

Furthermore, the average number of individual signs per glyph block is higher in this sequence than in typical glyphic texts. Not including the “double” sign, the total number of signs per glyph block, beginning with yu-ki-b'(i), is 3, 4, 3, 4, 2, 3. This contrasts with the density of six glyph blocks in the cartouches around the base of the pot itself (the other three of the nine cartouches are largely eroded). Here the individual sign count, beginning with k'inich, is 3, 1, 3, 1, 3, 1. This alternation of complex glyph blocks containing logographic and syllabic signs with glyph blocks of a single logographic sign is far more typical. It was, in fact, the unusual density of signs per glyph block that first called attention to the Nahua deity names that appear in the Venus table of the Dresden Codex (Whittaker 1986). The names ta-wi-si-ka-l(a), xi-wi-te-i, and ka-ka-tu-na-l(a) are spelled completely with syllabic signs, with counts of 5, 4, and 5 signs per glyph block (Macri and Looper 2003; Schele and Grube 1997; Taube and Bade 1991;Whittaker 1986). These unusually long sequences of syllabic spellings of foreign words are similar in density to the words spelled on the lid of the Río Azul pot. In the case of this text, however, it is not just the density of the glyphs blocks that is distinctive, but the density of all of the blocks of an entire six-glyph sequence. A text composed entirely of CV signs is not typical of Maya texts.

The specific relationship between Nahua languages and the words found in this text is not known. The Río Azul pot comes from a burial dated to the late fifth century and is much older than the earliest attestations of central Mexican Nahuatl. It need not be asserted that any colonial or contemporary Nahua language is a direct descendant of the language represented in this text, but only that the words in the text are from a language in the Nahua family. Most important, it is not differences between the text and contemporary Nahua varieties that are surprising but, rather, the degree of similarity. In fact, it can be seen from Table 1 that the vowels indicated by the last syllabic sign in each glyph block, typically ignored in spellings of Mayan words, actually contribute to the similarity with the Nahuatl forms cited in Karttunen (1983). Differences between the forms are relatively minor and include /i/ instead of /e/ for the second syllable of wi:teki, /m(a)/ instead of /ni/ for the final syllable of koxo:ni, and, if the second possible source for mu-l(u) is chosen, /u/ for both the /o/ and the /i/ of mo:lli. Loan words often reflect only a partially successful attempt to imitate the pronunciation of the foreign term.

The precise morpho-syntactic function of these words is unclear. Both descriptive phrases begin with ta, a particle that functions in Yukatekan and Ch'olan/Tzeltalan language families both as a general preposition and as a complementizer introducing subordinate clauses (Figure 2b, 2d). Although wi:teki and koxo:ni are cited in Karttunen (1983:90, 42) as verbs, in this text they modify the noun cacao. Such a usage parallels similar phrases in the contents portion of the PSS: ta yul and ta sa' ‘for his atole,’ ta tzih tel kakaw ‘for tree-fresh cacao,’ and ta ixim te kakaw ‘for corn cacao.’ What is not clear, however, is whether the Nahua words are used simply as adjectives as in “for threshed/shelled cacao, for sloshed boiled/foamed cacao,” or more specifically, as verbal adjectives describing the vessel as something used “for threshing/shelling cacao, for sloshing boiled/foamed cacao.” Given that the cup has an unusual screw-top lid, it may have been a vessel for shaking and foaming the chocolate, not just for serving it. These words may either be adjectives (“threshed/shelled,” “sloshed/shaken”) or verbs (“threshing/shelling,” “sloshing/shaking”).

The occurrence of these words not in isolated passages, but together within a complete text associated with chocolate, adds significance to this discovery. The incorporation of these Nahua words within a typical Classic Maya construction suggests that they had been integrated into the Mayan language of the scribe. The implications of this are far-reaching. It is evidence that contact between Mayan and Nahua speakers that was sustained enough that Nahua words describing the ceremonial chocolate drink were recorded within an otherwise Mayan glyphic text. The Maya may indeed have grown and consumed cacao prior to any Nahua contact (Hurst et al. 2002; Powis et al. 2002), but the use of Nahua words describing cacao on a vessel in an elite burial suggests that the Nahua terms associated with the ceremonial consumption of cacao carried a degree of prestige. Nahua speakers are likely to have played a significant role in the spread of certain ceremonial and economic uses of cacao, as well as in the introduction of other features of cultural significance.

Numerous items of material and intellectual culture (Kirchoff 1943), including various linguistic features (Campbell et al. 1986), have been shared among ethnic and linguistic groups from the area north of Mexico City well into Central America. Thus, the discovery of Nahua loan words within a Maya text is not surprising. What is unexpected is that such a find can be dated to the fifth century a.d., early in the Classic period. The presence of Nahua speakers in central Mexico, once thought to date no earlier than the fall of Teotihuacan in the seventh century a.d. (see, e.g., Campbell 1997:161), has been challenged by several linguists who suggest that Nahua speakers participated in Mesoamerican culture from a much earlier date (Dakin 2001, 2003; Dakin and Wichmann 2000; Hill 2001; Wichmann 1998).

Dakin and Wichmann (2000) name the ancient city of Teotihuacan (ca. 200 b.c.– a.d. 650) as a likely source of this early Nahua influence. A possibility worthy of further investigation, however, is that Nahua words, as well as the Early Classic “Mexican” influence in the Maya region, came not primarily from Teotihuacan but from other Nahua-speaking groups living in the Gulf Coast region or along the Pacific slope of Chiapas and Guatemala. The presence of Nahua words in a Maya text found in a burial dated to circa a.d. 480 offers tangible evidence that Nahua speakers were a significant cultural influence in Mesoamerica, specifically in southern Mesoamerica, far earlier that was previously believed.

RESUMEN

El descubrimiento de unas palabras nahuas en un vaso de cerámica muestra la influencia nahua en la región maya desde tiempos tan tempranos como el 480 d.C., varios siglos antes de lo que se creía. Las palabras fueron escritas con glifos silábicos en un vaso para cacao (Hall et al. 1990). Las palabras ocurren en el contexto de la secuencia primaria estándar, una formula maya muy común, y describen la bebida de cacao reservada para las elites. Esta nueva interpretación sustenta una filiación etimológica uto-azteca para la palabra cacao propuesta por Dakin y Wichmann (2000), y afirman que los nahuas, poderosos económica y militarmente, introdujeron la palabra cacao en el sur de Mesoamerica. Mas en general, este descubrimiento tiene importantes implicaciones en cuanto a la función de los hablantes uto-aztecas en la formación y propagación de la civilización mesoamericana.