Developed independently on two continents, the device was in use by artists within Mesoamerican cultures from as early as 650 BC until after the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, and 13th and 14th European painters. While European speech scrolls were drawn as if they were an actual unfurled scroll or strip of parchment, Mesoamerican speech scrolls are scroll-shaped, looking much like a question mark. It is used in heraldry for mottos or slogans and war-cries.
Mesoamerica
A Teotihuacan stick-ball player with a bi-color speech scroll. Note the "tabs" along the outer edge of the speech scroll.
Speech scrolls are found throughout the Mesoamerica area. An early example is a Olmecceramiccylinder seal dated to c.650 BC, where two lines emit from a bird's mouth followed by glyphs proposed to be "3 Ajaw," a ruler's name.[2] The murals of the Classic era site at Teotihuacan are filled with speech scrolls, in particular tableaus in the Tepantitla compound—this mural, for example, has more than 20 speech scrolls.
In Mesoamerica, speech-scrolls are usually oriented upwards along the longest outer edge so that the central element (or "tongue") curves downward as it spirals. Some Mesoamerican scrolls are divided lengthwise with each side given a different shade. Glyphs or similar markings rarely appear on the Mesoamerican speech scroll, although "tabs"—small, triangular or square blocks—are sometimes seen along the outer edge. If the speech scroll represents a tongue, then the tabs may represent teeth, but their meaning or message, if any, is not known.[3]
A mural in the ancient Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan, Mexico, c.2nd century)
At times, speech scrolls are decorated with devices that describe the tone of the speech:
In an engraving at the Maya site of Chichen Itza, a ruler's speech scroll takes the form of a serpent.[4]
A Spaniard's speech scroll in a 16th-century Aztec codex is decorated with feathers to denote "soft, smooth words".[5]
In another 16th-century codex, the Selden Codex, two Mixtec rulers (photo above) are shown insulting two ambassadors through the use of "flint knife" icons attached to the speech scrolls.[6]
After the Spanish Conquest, the indigenous languages received adaptations of the Latin alphabet and many codex were sponsored to be written in this epoch, such as Codex Quinatzin, that combines speech scrolls with actual writing.
In contrast to the abstract nature of Mesoamerican speech scrolls, Medieval European speech scrolls or banderoles appear as actual scrolls, floating in apparent three-dimensional space (or in actual space in sculpture). They first become common at the start of the Gothic period. Previously, as in Byzantine art, spoken words, if they appeared at all, were usually painted alongside a figure; these are called tituli. However, earlier works using banderoles are the Aachen Gospels of Otto III (c.975) and the 12th-century English RomanesqueCloisters Cross.[8] The latter work demonstrates the use of banderoles as attributes for Old Testamentprophets, to distinguish them from the book-carrying Four Evangelists of the New Testament and other Christian saints, a convention appearing in Italy in the 13th century. It may be seen in the Santa Trinita Maestà by Cimabue (Uffizi, 1280–90), Duccio's Maestà (1308–11), and other works. The convention had a historical appropriateness, as the Old Testament was originally written on scrolls, whereas nearly all surviving New Testament manuscripts are codices (like modern books). They may also be used for the words of angels, especially Gabriel's greeting to Mary in Annunciation scenes.[9]
Epitaph of Jan of Ujazd, Anonymous, Lesser Poland, c.1450
During the 14th century, quotations in banderoles increasingly allowed artists to include more complex ideas in their works, though for the moment usually in Latin, thus greatly restricting the audience that could follow them.[10] In this context, medieval donor illustrations are of particular importance, as they recorded the names of the patrons as painted text and thus supplemented the purely pictorial information with readable content for the already literate urban mercantile elite.[11]
European speech scrolls usually contain the spoken words, much like a modern-day speech balloon. The majority of these are in religious works and contain Biblical quotations from the figure depicted – Old Testament prophets for example, were often shown with an appropriate quotation from their work. Because the words are usually religious in nature, the speech scroll is often written in Latin even when appearing in woodcut illustrations for books written in the vernacular.[12] This would also enable the illustration to be used in editions in other languages.
European speech scrolls may at times be seen in secular works as well and may also contain the name of a person to identify them. On carved figures the words would usually be painted on the scroll and have since worn away. In some Late Gothic and Renaissance works, and in architectural decoration, very elaborate empty banderoles seem to be for decorative purposes only. The European speech scroll fell out of favor largely due to an increasing interest in realism in painting; the halo had a similar decline.[citation needed]
Boone, Elizabeth (1994). Writing Without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes, Duke University Press.
Coggins, Clement Chase (1992). "Pure Language & Lapidary Prose", in New Theories on the Ancient Maya, Elin C. Danien and Robert J. Sharer, Eds., University of Pennsylvania Museum.
Hilmo, Maidie (2004). Medieval Images, Icons, and Chaucer Illustrated English Literary Texts: From Ruthwell Cross to the Ellesmere Chaucer, Ashgate Publishing.
Kantorowicz, Ernst Hartwig (1997). The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology. Princeton University Press. p.67. ISBN978-0-691-01704-4.
La Venta is a pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Olmec civilization located in the present-day Mexican state of Tabasco. Some of the artifacts have been moved to the museum "Parque - Museo de La Venta", which is in nearby Villahermosa, the capital of Tabasco.
Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of prehispanic Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian ; the Archaic, the Preclassic or Formative (2500 BCE – 250 CE), the Classic (250–900 CE), and the Postclassic (900–1521 CE); as well as the post European contact Colonial Period (1521–1821), and Postcolonial, or the period after independence from Spain (1821–present).
A tzompantli or skull rack was a type of wooden rack or palisade documented in several Mesoamerican civilizations, which was used for the public display of human skulls, typically those of war captives or other sacrificial victims. It is a scaffold-like construction of poles on which heads and skulls were placed after holes had been made in them. Many have been documented throughout Mesoamerica, and range from the Epiclassic through early Post-Classic. In 2015 archeologists announced the discovery of the Huey Tzompantli, with more than 650 skulls, in the archeological zone of the Templo Mayor in Mexico City.
Eight Deer Jaguar Claw, or Eight Deer for brevity, was a powerful Mixtec ruler in 11th-century Oaxaca referred to in the 15th-century deerskin manuscript Codex Zouche-Nuttall, and other Mixtec manuscripts. His surname is alternatively translated Tiger-Claw and Ocelot-Claw. John Pohl has dated his life spanning from 1063 until his assassination in 1115.
A banderole is a comparatively small but long flag, historically used by knights and on ships, and as a heraldic device for representing bishops.
Chalcatzingo is a Mesoamerican archaeological site in the Valley of Morelos dating from the Formative Period of Mesoamerican chronology. The site is well known for its extensive array of Olmec-style monumental art and iconography. Located in the southern portion of the Central Highlands of Mexico, Chalcatzingo is estimated to have been settled as early as 1500 BCE. The inhabitants began to produce and display Olmec-style art and architecture around 900 BCE. At its height between 700 BCE and 500 BCE, Chalcatzingo's population is estimated at between five hundred and a thousand people. By 500 BCE it had gone into decline. The climate in Morelos is generally warmer and more humid than the rest of the Highlands. The Chalcatzingo center covers roughly 100 acres (0.40 km2). Evidence indicates that this was a site of ritual significance.
Mesoamerica, along with Mesopotamia and China, is one of three known places in the world where writing is thought to have developed independently. Mesoamerican scripts deciphered to date are a combination of logographic and syllabic systems. They are often called hieroglyphs due to the iconic shapes of many of the glyphs, a pattern superficially similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs. Fifteen distinct writing systems have been identified in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, many from a single inscription. The limits of archaeological dating methods make it difficult to establish which was the earliest and hence the progenitor from which the others developed. The best documented and deciphered Mesoamerican writing system, and the most widely known, is the classic Maya script. Earlier scripts with poorer and varying levels of decipherment include the Olmec hieroglyphs, the Zapotec script, and the Isthmian script, all of which date back to the 1st millennium BC. An extensive Mesoamerican literature has been conserved, partly in indigenous scripts and partly in postconquest transcriptions in the Latin script.
The traditions of indigenous Mesoamerican literature extend back to the oldest-attested forms of early writing in the Mesoamerican region, which date from around the mid-1st millennium BCE. Many of the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica are known to have been literate societies, who produced a number of Mesoamerican writing systems of varying degrees of complexity and completeness. Mesoamerican writing systems arose independently from other writing systems in the world, and their development represents one of the very few such origins in the history of writing.
The Cascajal Block is a tablet-sized slab serpentinite dated to the early first millennium BCE, incised with previously unknown characters that have been claimed to represent the earliest writing system in the New World. Archaeologist Stephen D. Houston of Brown University said that this discovery helps to "link the Olmec civilization to literacy, document an unsuspected writing system, and reveal a new complexity to [the Olmec] civilization."
Many undeciphered writing systems exist today; most date back several thousand years, although some more modern examples do exist. The term "writing systems" is used here loosely to refer to groups of glyphs which appear to have representational symbolic meaning, but which may include "systems" that are largely artistic in nature and are thus not examples of actual writing.
Mixtec writing originated as a logographic writing system during the Post-Classic period in Mesoamerican history. Records of genealogy, historic events, and myths are found in the pre-Columbian Mixtec codices. The arrival of Europeans in 1520 AD caused changes in form, style, and the function of the Mixtec writings. Today these codices and other Mixtec writings are used as a source of ethnographic, linguistic, and historical information for scholars, and help to preserve the identity of the Mixtec people as migration and globalization introduce new cultural influences.
Classic Veracruz culture refers to a cultural area in the north and central areas of the present-day Mexican state of Veracruz, a culture that existed from roughly 100 to 1000 CE, or during the Classic era.
San Andrés is an Olmec archaeological site in the present-day Mexican state of Tabasco. Located 5 km northeast of the Olmec ceremonial center of La Venta in the Grijalva river delta section of the Tabasco Coastal Plain, San Andrés is considered one of its elite satellite communities, with evidence of elite residences and other elite activities. Several important archaeological finds have been made at San Andrés, including the oldest evidence of the domesticated sunflower, insight into Olmec feasting rituals, didactic miniatures, and possible evidence of an Olmec writing system.
Olmec hieroglyphs are a set of glyphs developed within the Olmec culture. The Olmecs were the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilization, flourishing during the formative period in the tropical lowlands of the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. The subsequent Epi-Olmec culture, was a successor culture to the Olmec and featured the Isthmian script, which has been characterized as a full-fledged writing system, though with its partial decipherment being disputed.
Yahui is a supernatural figure that takes on various mixtures of animal and human forms within the culture and belief systems of the Mixtec—indigenous Mixtecan-speaking people of La Mixteca in central-southeastern Mexico. It is an important and recurring motif in Mixtec iconography, thought and culture, especially during the pre-Columbian era. As a supernatural figure, the yahui appears in Postclassic Mixtec codices as an entity wearing a serpent or reptilian tail and headdress and the carapace of a turtle.
The Codex Bodley is an important pictographic manuscript and example of Mixtec historiography. It was named after the colloquial name of the Bodleian Library, where it has been stored since the 17th century.
The use of mirrors in Mesoamerican culture was associated with the idea that they served as portals to a realm that could be seen but not interacted with. Mirrors in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica were fashioned from stone and served a number of uses, from the decorative to the divinatory. An ancient tradition among many Mesoamerican cultures was the practice of divination using the surface of a bowl of water as a mirror. At the time of the Spanish conquest this form of divination was still practiced among the Maya, Aztecs and Purépecha. In Mesoamerican art, mirrors are frequently associated with pools of liquid; this liquid was likely to have been water.
The Codex Selden is a Mexican manuscript of Mixtec origin. The codex is an account of the genealogy of the Jaltepec dynasty from the tenth to the 16th century. Codex Selden is possibly a fragment of a much longer improperly stored document. Although it was completed after the arrival of the conquistadors in the Mixtec region, it is considered one of the six pre-Hispanic Mixtec codices that survived the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. The last date mentioned in the Codex is 1556, which can be interpreted as the date when the codex was finished.
Xicalcoliuhqui is a common motif in Mesoamerican art. It is composed of three or more steps connected to a hook or spiral, reminiscent of a "greek-key" meander. Pre-Columbian examples may be found on everything from jewelry, masks, ceramics, sculpture, textiles and featherwork to painted murals, codices and architectural elements of buildings. The motif has been in continual use from the pre-Columbian era to the present.
The Mixtec culture was a pre-hispanic archaeological culture, corresponding to the ancestors of the Mixtec people; they called themselves ñuu Savi, which means "people or nation of the rain". It had its first manifestations in the Mesoamerican Middle Preclassic period and ended with the Spanish conquest in the first decades of the 16th century. The historical territory of this people is the area known as La Mixteca, a mountainous region located between the current Mexican states of Puebla, Oaxaca, and Guerrero.
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