Cuilol (MH520r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Cuilol ("A Painting" or "Painter") attested here as a man's name, is a horizontal rectangular box with a double line around the outside and a division across the middle. In each half of the box there is a large flower-like or rosette shape with a central circle, resulting in something like a pair of quincunxes. If lines were drawn connecting the four petals in each (symmetrical) flower, the result would be an X-shape. This sign seems to represent the noun (i)cuilolli, which is somewhat rare in the vocabularies. In this case the beginning i- (which seems to be optional, just as with the verb icuiloa, to write or paint) has dropped away.
Stephanie Wood
The iconographic example of tlacuiloliztli (the act of writing or painting) from the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, folio 30 recto (below), has one of its two boxes with a similar flower shape. The same flower, standing for icuiloa (according to Gordon Whittaker, personal communication), appears on the pre-contact stone carving (below).
Penny C. Morrill translates the name "Cuillol" as "Painter" in her book, The Casa del Deán (2014, 89).
Stephanie Wood
antonio cuillol
Antonio Cuilol
Stephanie Wood
1560
Stephanie Wood
writing, painting, escrituras, pinturas, tlacuilolli
This stone carving of what appears to be a pair of glyphs that refer to writing and painting is located in the Museo de Escultura Mexica at the archaeological site of Santa Cecilia Acatitlan (juris. Tlalnepantla, Mexico City). This visual diphrasism repeats around what was a cuauhxicalli (container for hearts) that was repurposed as a baptismal font, according to the interpretation in the museum. The flower on the left is much like the flowers in the two squares in the glyph above. Photo by Stephanie Wood, 13 August 2023.
Cuilol, a name, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/Cuilol
cuilol(li), a painting or a manuscript, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cuilolli
icuilol(li), a painting or a manuscript, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/icuilolli
icuiloa, to write/paint, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cuiloa
tlacuilol(li), a piece of writing or painting; https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlacuilolli
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 520r, World Digital Library.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=119&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).