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Kamazotz — Zapotec Characters + More
Published: 2013-05-09 18:53:10 +0000 UTC; Views: 8263; Favourites: 58; Downloads: 52
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Description
These are sketches of the characters from the Zapotec side plus an extra character. On the left we have the Aztec Princess Coyolicatzin, or as she is known by the Zapotecs, Pelaxilla. Historically she was known for having unusually light skin, hence her name, which means 'Cotton flake'. At the top we have the Zapotec Coquihualao or 'Great Lord/King' Cosijoeza. Shown with and without his headdess. Next to him in profile is his wife who I have not yet named. The name Xonaxi though was used to refer to Zapotec lady's (wife of the King). In yellow, we have a Zapotec priest wearing the flayed skin of a sacrifice. The Old woman is Cosijoeza's mother, who gives him advice. She has not been named yet either. The man in red at the bottom is a warrior on the Zapotec side (to get a commoner point of view). The man on the bottom right hand is his commander, the Zapotec Captain.Next, sketches the Mixtec side.
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Comments: 12
Hi there! first of all I want to congratulate your job. It is great! And just want to make some observations about what you wrote specially relating to the queen Pelaxilla who was a mexica princes doughter of the aztec emperor Ahuizotl, had the birth-name of "Quetzalcoatl" (just like the aztec´s god) and once she got married with the zapotec king Cosiioeza (Cosijoeza) she was renamed as Pelaxilla/Xilabela. The name Coyolicatzin is a "recently wrong name" giving to her due the missunderstanding of transtalions from nahuatl, zapotec and spanish. I am going to try to clarified it once I am not an expert; let´s start with the nahuatl name "Quetzalcoalt" that literaly means precious feathered snake from quetzal= precious feather and coatl= snake as you can see in nahuatl as in english they put the adjective in first position and the object in second position but in zapotec is in the other way arround the object is in first position and the adjective in second possition, therefore if we translate "quetzalcoatl" to zapotec of XV century it would be Pelaxilla where pela= snake and xilla= feather, but making a traduction word by word in the nahuatl name we get "Xillabela" or Xilavela as it was writing by the monk Juan de Cordova who was on of the first europeans who recorded the history of the zapotec nation and the firs to create a dictionary of zapotec-spanish, I just want to mark that zapotec is a tonal lenguage so depending on the entonation the meaning of the words can difer and in the century XV spanish languagues was not yet standardized therefore "v" and "b" could be wrinting very arbitrary. However, the wrong name of Coyolicatzin was created by José Antonio Gay in century XIX and popularized by Manuel Mantínez Grácida in his book "Cosijoeza y su familia" published in 1888 this mistake was made from the fact that as I mensioned Juan de Córdova wrote that name of the queen was "Xilavela" but as hi wrote in his dictionary "xila" means cotton and "bela or pela" means snake but also meat!! then José Antonio Gay plused these names and he asumed that cotton+meat= cotton flake. I know it is a complex but an interesting history behind the name of one of the most importants zapotec queens who protected her new nation agains the expansionism willing of her own father, therefore we should refer correclty to her as Xilabela, Pelaxilla or even as Qutezalcoatl but never a Coyolicatzin. I hope I could clarified the name error and I share you some of my resources where I get the information, they are in spanish I hope tha´s not a problem.
#http ://mroudyk.weebly.com/uploads/5/1/1/2/5112023/nueva_historia.pdf
#http ://papelesdelsol.blogspot.de/2013/06/articulo-coyolicatzin-se-llamaba.html
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Hi it is me again! I don´t want to annoy you LOL but just remark some little mistakes that I concider important to say, in zapotec of century XVI the word for king was "coquitao" and not "coquihualao" that means prince. And in other topic once Cosiioeza´s mother does not have a name I´d to sugest few:
Female old zapotec names
-Pinopiaa (who was a Cosiioeza´s daughter)
-Piuxicachi (Cosiioeza´s mother, the name means precious morsel according to Juán de Córdova year 1578)
-Donaayi or Donayi and currently better know as Donaji (I want to say that "j sound" (as in "Juan" in spanish) does not exist in zapotec therefore "Donayi" is a fonetic way to write it, at least in spanish.
-Quialexa
-Beldayace
Males old zapotec names
-Zochiila or Zaachila (Cosiioeza´s grandfather)
-Nitopesa
-Cosiiopii II (Cosiioeza´s son and last zapotec king who met the spanish, Cosiiopii I or Cosiiopii the conqueror was the father of Cosiioeza and the one who conquered the isthmus of Tehuantepec)
as you can notice there are some divergences in the names, it is due the dificulty by the spanish to write the zapotec names using spanish alphabet, once zapotec language is a tonal languages and it had (and still having) sounds that do not exist in spanish, as well as in the century XVI spanish writing was quite chaotic due a lack of standardization of orthography.
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You've really brought these characters to life! A glimpse into another world.
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Really looking forward to seeing this story play out!
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