Matelchiuh (MH518r)

Matelchiuh (MH518r)
Simplex Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Matelchiuh shows a man's head in profile looking toward the viewer's right. The (right) hand (maitl)] of another person is grabbing a large portion of hair on the first person's hair.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

The phonetic "ma" from hand provides the start to this name, but the rest of it (telchihua, telchiuh) is inferred by the action of dishonoring someone. As López Austin has explained (The Human Body and Ideology, 19898, v. 1, 220), the tonalli (sacred force) of a person was connected to the head and the hair, and thus was not to be mishandled by another person. Hair was rarely washed or cut, because it protected the tonalli. To forcibly cut someone's hair was extremely deprecating. War captives were grabbed by the hair, which disgraced them. [For a long discussion about Nahuas and hair, see Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, "Language of the Body and the Body as Language," in Religion in New Spain, ed. Susan Schroeder and Stafford Poole, 2007, 72.]

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

peo matelchiuh

Gloss Normalization: 

Pedro Matelchiuh

Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Huexotzinco, Matrícula de (MH)
Date of Manuscript: 

1560

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Huejotzingo, Puebla, Mexico

Semantic Categories: 
personal name
Cultural Content & Iconography: 
Anatomy, human body parts
Gender (male)
Hair (human or animal)
Names (personal and/or theonym)
Religion (Indigenous)
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors: 
black & white drawing (no color)
Shapes and Perspectives: 
facing right
profile view
Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 

matel, an optative indicator, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/matel
chihua, to do, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/chihua
telchihua, to deprecate someone, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/telchihua

Image Source: 

Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 518r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=115&st=image

Image Source, Rights: 

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).

Historical Contextualizing Image: