SELER] MEXICAN PICTURE WRITINGS FRAGMENT II 165 



places, was called variously Ciuacoatl, " the snake woman ", Ton- 

 antzin, " our dear mother ", or Teteo innan, '' mother of the gods ", 

 and who was to the father, the ancient god of heaven, exactly what 

 the ciuaconatl was to the king in the earthly realm of the Mexican 

 commonwealth. 



I give in s a painting of this goddess corresponding exactly to the 

 one in our hieroglyph. It occurs on plate 03 of the Goupil-Boban 

 atlas, and there denotes Ciuacoatl, the goddess of Colhuacan. to 

 whom Mexican j^risoners are being sacrificed. 



Motelchiuh means '* the despised ". The hieroglyph which here ex- 

 presses this name is the well-known hieroglyph te-tl, '' stone ", which 

 is painted in brown and black, to express the various colors or the 

 veining of stone. Of course, this hieroglyph is only an approxima- 

 tion of the sound Avhich it is actually intended to represent. It is not 

 impossible that there is some etymologic connection, though only an 

 indirect one, between the words te-tl, '' stone "", and tel-chiua, " to 

 despise "'. Besides, Motelchiuh is designated also in the Sahagun 

 manuscript of the Academica de la Historia in precisely the same 

 way: that is, by tlie hieroglyph te-tl '" stone "' {e, figure 37). 



Uanitzin, division 2, is hieroglyphically denoted by the flag 

 (pamitl). p, b, and w are all kindred sounds, and our (German) av, 

 or, more correctly, the P^nglish w, is the sound which the old gram- 

 marians intended to express by u or v, and the Jesuits by hu. It 

 seems to be only an error when Chimalpahin occasionally writes 

 Panitzin instead of Huanitzin; that is, Uanitzin. Uanitl is also de- 

 noted by a small flag in the Sahagun manuscript of the Academia de 

 la Historia (g, figure 37). 



Lastly, Oqniztli, in the first division above the lower path, is 

 simply described by the hieroglyph of the city Azcapotzalco, whose 

 ruler he was. Azcapotzalco means " in the place of the ant-hills ". 

 The city is therefore hieroglyphically expressed by the i)icture of an 

 ant-hill (see a and ?>, the former taken from the Mendoza codex, the 

 latter from a record preserved in the library of the Duke of Osuna). 

 Here we see in the midst of small pebbles and grains of sand a crea- 

 ture, usually painted^red and of a somewhat exaggerated shape, which 

 is intended to represent an ant (azcatl). 



I will noAV state briefly what is known concerning the subsequent 

 fate of the four persons whom Chimalpahin mentions as companions 

 of Quauhtemoc, the last free king of Mexico, and who in. our manu- 

 script are set down in due order underneath Quauhtemoc. 



Tlacotzin seems to have been a grandson of Ahuitzotl, the eighth 

 king of the Mexicans." He was therefore a near relative of Quauhte- 



" See Anales de Chimalpahin, Seventh Relation, ed. Kemi Simeon, p. 266, where the 

 yxhiiiuhlzin inyn, " the grandson c.f riie previous one", can hardly refer to anyone but the 

 previously mentioned Ahuitzotl. 



