Cihuacahual (MH741v)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name or life status, Cihuacahual (“Widow”), is attested here as pertaining to a woman (cihuatl). The glyph simply shows the head of a woman in profile, facing left. Her hair is done in the traditional style of the neaxtlahualli. The -cahual part of the name (left, abandoned, widowed) is not shown visually.
Stephanie Wood
Widows and widowers were common in a world where epidemic disease was taking the lives of so many people, especially given that germs were brought in by the colonizers, and the Indigenous people did not have immunities to these germs. Glyphs portraying many widows and widowers show them with tears running down their cheeks.
Stephanie Wood
anna. ciuacaual
Ana Cihuacahual
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
viuda, nombres de mujeres, estatus de mujeres
cihua(tl), woman, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cihuatl
cahual(li), someone left, abandoned, widowed, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cahualli
Viuda
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 741v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=561&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).