Ecatl (MH533r)

A great many glyphs in this collection start with Eca- when Ehecatl is expected, given the iconography. The gloss here gives "Ecatl," but the visuals suggest "Ehecatl." We are recognizing the possibility of an unintentional oral abbreviation of Eheca- to Eca-. But, if the shortening of the name is intentional, it may be a response to the edict of 1540 prohibiting the naming of Nahua children after deities that led to a favoring of Ecatl over Ehecatl, as a kind of disguise. See Norma Angélica Castilla Palma, "Las huellas del oficio y lo sagrado en los nombres nahuas de familias y barrios de Cholula," Dimensión Antropológica v. 65 (sept.-dic. 2015), 186. Castilla also mentions how there were pressures to stop using names from the tonalpohualli, and this led to the dropping of the number that went with the day name. Such a number is absent here. So the whole result is a lessening of the sacred aspects, perhaps for outsiders.

This example does not include the face paint or tattoo of a black line on the cheek, but it does show a strange instrument coming out of the person's mouth. Usually, it is a beak-like instrument; this one is more of a horn, suggesting European influence. But perhaps the beak-like instruments, like this horn instrument, are intended to suggest an apparatus through which wind was blown on Earth. Gabrielle Vail and ‎Christine Hernández (Re-Creating Primordial Time, 2013, ) describe Ehecatl as the wind aspect of Quetzalcoatl, and they note that Ehecatl "wears a buccal (duck) mask through which to blow wind." That the "beak" may have been perceived as a blowing device is supported by the glyph for Pitztli (below).