ilhuitl (Mdz19r)
This simplex glyph for the noun "day" (ilhuitl) is taken from an example where each of four day signs was actually intended to represent twenty days (hence the gloss "ochenta días"). The glyphs for day can vary in the placement of their colors. In this example, the sign is a large circle with smaller concentric circles and four tiny circles around the outside perimeter. The very center is white, with a red band around that. The next circular band contains pinwheel shapes with two turquoise-blue, one red, one green, and one yellow section. The tiny circles on the perimeter are placed in such a way to make corners on the circle. These are painted white, green, turquoise-blue, and yellow.
Stephanie Wood
John Montgomery made a drawing of four of these signs, each one with a flag over it and therefore each one representing twenty days, for a total of eighty days. He drew this from the Codex Aubin 149. The presence of the flag really facilitates an understanding of the meaning of the sign, which should be one day in its simplest form (without the flag).
The quincunx organization of the glyph for ilhuitl likely connects to Nahua conceptualizations of the universe, with four cardinal directions and perhaps a center axis that reaches the underworld and the heavens. The pinwheel iconography certain suggests motion, probably the motion of the sun that brings the day and is also responsible for the changing times of the day. Note how the tonatiuh glyph (below) has a more complex shape and iconography, but appears connected to the glyph for day. Please see our blog post (on the left-hand navigation bar) on shimmering glyphs, which includes this one. A direction worth exploring further is the relationship between tonalli and ilhuitl, which can both stand for "day."
Stephanie Wood
ochenta dias
ochenta días
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
days, días, suns, soles, time, tiempo, calendar, calendario
ilhui(tl), day, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ilhuitl
el día
Codex Mendoza, folio 19 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 48 of 188.
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, hold the original manuscript, the MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1. This image is published here under the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0).
