Macuil (MH809v)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Macuil (“Five”) is attested here as a man’s name. The glyph shows a hand (maitl) holding what appear to be five (macuilli) sticks. The hand is a phonetic reinforcement that the name starts with Ma-.
Stephanie Wood
The name Macuil may represent a calendrical name that has lost its day sign. Whether this evolution in naming practices suggests a gradual forgetting of the divinatory calendar names, some self-censoring as ecclesiastical influence grew, or a response to the way the clergy was actively pressing for change are processes that require further investigation. Another option is that it had a meaning associated with lasciviousness. There were five divine forces called Ahuiteteo ("Cheerful Deities") known for "voluptuousness and lust," and each one of the five had a calendrical name that started with the number five (macuilli), a "symbol of excesses" (according to signage at the Templo Mayor), perhaps sexual excesses.
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
manos, cinco, números, nombres de hombres
This is one of the Ahuiteteo, one of five divine forces of cheerfulness, voluptuousness, lasciviousness, and lustfulness. All five had calendrical names starting with the number five, which therefore had associations with “excesses,” according to signage at the Templo Mayor. Photograph by Stephanie Wood, Museo del Templo Mayor, Mexico City, 15 February 2023.
ma(itl), hand, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/maitl
macuil(li), five, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/macuilli
Cinco
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 809v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=693st=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).
