cuauhtli (MH483r)

cuauhtli (MH483r)
Element from a Compound

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This element for eagle (cuauhtli) has been carved from the compound sign for the personal name, Cuauhtlahtoa. This is a profile view of just the head of an eagle, facing to the viewer's right. Its head is largely white with the wispy feathers along the crown being black. Its eye is just an open circle, and its beak is open.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

When cuauhtli was a name, it probably had a calendrical origin, i.e. drawing from the day in the calendar that the person was born. Eagle was a popular name. "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.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Huexotzinco, Matrícula de (MH)
Date of Manuscript: 

1560

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Huejotzingo, Puebla

Semantic Categories: 
calendrics
day name
year name
Syntax: 
noun(s)
Cultural Content & Iconography: 
Animals, incl. Birds, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, etc.
Mouth/Beak Open
Time, Calendar, Frequency
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Xitlali Torres

Colors: 
black & white drawing (no color)
Shapes and Perspectives: 
facing right
profile view
Keywords: 

eagles, águilas, nombres, names, calendarios, calendars

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 

cuauhtli, eagle, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cuauhtli.

Image Source: 

Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 483r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=45&st=image.

Image Source, Rights: 

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).

Historical Contextualizing Image: 
See Also: 

Cuauhtlatoa (MH483r)