The náhuatl hieroglyphic writing on the lienzo de Tlaxcala and the conquest of El Salvador

Abstract

The lienzo de Tlaxcala is a pictographic document created by the Tlaxcalans in the 16th century to demonstrate their participation in the wars of conquest carried out throughout Mesoamerican territory. There are several copies of the lienzo. One of these is the so-called Glasgow Manuscript, written by Diego Muñoz Camargo around 1584. It is a combination of alphabetical text in Spanish, a series of images, and Nahuatl hieroglyphic writing that depict one by one the battles that Muñoz Camargo describes. Its greatest peculiarity, compared to the other copies of the lienzo, is that it reports 11 more towns in Salvadoran territory and another 11 in Guatemalan territory. This article deals with the path documented by the Tlaxcalans in Salvadoran territory and the decipherment of each of their toponyms with hieroglyphic writing. The novelty of the work is that it is unusual to work with Nahuatl hieroglyphic writing and the Tlaxcalan version since priority is always given to the alphabetical version of the Spanish.

Keywords: El Salvador - History - Discovery and conquest 1524, El Salvador - History - Invasion 1524, Indigenous languages - Writing, Nahuatl (Indigenous language) - Writing, Hieroglyphics, Indigenous pictography

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5377/koot.v1i17.18985

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/11298/1374