Cuilol (MH829r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name and occupation Cuilol (literally, a "A Painting," but could be "A Piece of Writing"), here attested as a man's name. The glyph shows a bound book with what appears to be alphabetic writing on it, showing European influence. A (left) hand with a vertical writing implement appears either in front or behind the book. Given this agency, perhaps the translation would be better as "Writer," but writer is tlacuilo, and this is glossed as though a personal name, not put in the place where we find occupation glyphs.
Stephanie Wood
Marc Thouvenot suggested the tracking of words that contain "cuil" as a fruitful line of inquiry. A great many of these glyphs have to do with writing and painting. The term tlacuilo is very well known and so very important for understanding Indigenous writing and painting traditions. Writing and painting overlapped in pre-contact times and into the Spanish colonial era, too. But gradually, Nahuas' thinking about writing began to diverge from painting as they increasingly wrote using the Roman alphabet.
Stephanie Wood
juā cuilol
Juan Cuilol
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
nombres de hombres, escritor, pintor, libros, escrituras, cuadros, pintar, escribir
Cuilol, a name, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/Cuilol
cuilol(li), a painting or a manuscript, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cuilolli
Escritura (?)
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 829r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=732&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).
