Cozcacuauh (Verg27r)

It is probably the case that the people who originally named the vulture thought that it had interesting feathers at its neck line, perhaps reminiscent of a necklace, and setting it off from the eagle. This vulture is a day name in the 260-day religious divinatory calendar. As is the case here, other examples of the name Cozcacuauh often lack the companion number (1 through 13) from the calendar. Whether this omission may have been an effort to disguise that these were calendrical names (in the face of disapproving colonial clergy). If this manuscript is as early as many believe, it would probably not be likely that this was a case of forgetting the iconography. Other Cozcacuauh compounds without their companion numbers appear on folios 29 recto and 31 verso. Serious events in Tetzcoco in 1539 may have made Nahua tlacuilos more cautious when writing and painting about aspects of their faith. See Patricia Lopes Don for information about the Inquisition case against don Carlos Ometochtli, a Chichimecatecuhtli (or Chichimecateuctli) executed in late 1539, in Bonfires of Culture, 2010. Bradley Benton (The Lords of Tetzcoco, 2017, 46) also writes that the case “demonstrates that blatant disregard for Christianity had serious consequences.”