Chicomacatl (MH874r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph-plus-notation represents a personal name here, Chicomacatl (“Seven-Reed” or “7-Reed,” a calendrical name) attested as a man's name. The notation is a series of unpainted circles attached to horizontal lines that connect to the vertical reed (acatl), which is to their left. Five of the circles are clear, but two are not as clear. The reed has one thin leaf on the left. running vertically to the right of the glyph for reed (acatl). This reed is not segmented as some are. The reed has no colorant here.
Stephanie Wood
This is a calendrical name, drawn from the tonalpohuall, 260-day divinatory calendar, which played an important role in the Nahuas' religious views of the cosmos. Acatl was a propitious date: "They said the good days were Reed, Monkey, Crocodile, Eagle, House" (central Mexico, sixteenth century). See: Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 129.
Alternatively, the name chicomacatl could relate to a medicinal herb, and the calendrical notation for Chicomacatl was painted here to approximate the name of the herb.
Stephanie Wood
bartholome chicomacatl
Bartolomé Chicomacatl
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
Chicome Acatl, Seven Reed, reeds, plants, numbers, plantas, números, cañas, carrizo, nombres de hombres
Siete Caña (7-Caña), o una hierba medicinal(?)
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 874r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=820&st=image.
This manuscript is hosted by the Library of Congress and the World Digital Library; used here with the Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SAq 3.0).
