Mazatl (Verg39r)

This simplex Nahuatl hieroglyph is a black-line drawing of the personal name Mazatl (“Deer”), which is attested here as a man’s name. It shows a mazatl in profile, facing left, with its nose raised up somewhat. It also has horns. This is a calendrical name from the religious divinatory calendar, the tonalpohualli. Originally, it would have had a numerical component from 1 to 13 to go with the day name. It may be that the family or the tlacuilo has suppressed the use of the added number because the clergy was trying to discourage the continued use of the pre-contact calendar in naming children. Serious events in 1539 may have made Nahua tlacuilos more cautious when writing and painting about aspects of their faith. See Patricia Lopes Don for information about the Inquisition case against don Carlos Ometochtli, a Chichimecateuctli (or Chichimecatecuhtli) executed in late 1539, in Bonfires of Culture, 2010. Bradley Benton (The Lords of Tetzcoco, 2017, 46) also writes that the case “demonstrates that blatant disregard for Christianity had serious consequences.”