atl (CholRG)
This painting of the iconographic example of water (what would be atl, but there is no gloss) flows at an angle. The contextualizing image shows that it includes two swirls and one rectangular spiral. It is drawn in black ink and washed over with a green paint.
Stephanie Wood
See other rectangular spirals in water glyphs and iconography below. The lines of current in this water glyph are more squiggly than usual, suggesting a stronger current or more turbulent water.
Stephanie Wood
1581
agua, espirales, movimiento
a(tl), water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atl
agua
https://collections.lib.utexas.edu/catalog/utblac:bfe9df59-d0c1-46a6-8c4...
This map (original: 31 x 44 cm.) of Cholollan (modern spelling: Cholula), from 1581 and housed in the Benson Library at the University of Texas, Austin, which considers it to be in the public domain. It is an indigenous-authored map that was made in response to questionnaires from the Spanish crown about its colonial possessions. Responses to the questionnaires were called Relaciones Geográficas (RG). The map’s glosses are in Nahuatl and Spanish, and the style is mixed indigenous-European. This is an urban plan of the heart of Cholula, emphasizing a grid pattern, which was of special interest to the colonizers. Several altepetl (Nahua socio-political units) are encompassed by the map, although they are called “cabezeras” (cabeceras, Spanish for head town) on the map. San Gabriel is the principal church of the many churches shown. The market square, “tianquizco,” holds a prominent, central place. A fountain occupies this space.
The Benson Library has determined that this pictorial manuscript is in the public domain and is shared through Creative Commons. The library kindly provided this image for inclusion in the Mapas Project, a digital collection of indigenous-authored pictorial manuscripts (soon to be archived) once at the University of Oregon. Student assistant Ellen Heenan processed the images using PhotoShop in 2015, and Stephanie Wood has repurposed these images for use in the Visual Lexicon in 2024.
