miqui (Mdz43r)
This element has been carved from the compound glyph for Mictlan (on 43 verso of the Codex Mendoza). It is a black-line drawing of a skull in profile, facing the viewer's right, with its mouth open wide. There is a wavy link on the cranium. The skull has an open eye. In the original glyph, the skull appears to almost wish to bite a wrapped corpse. Gordon Whittaker (Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs, 2021, 78) notes that the skull represents a semantic complement with a meaning of miqui, the verb to die.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
death, dying, la muerte, muriendo, muertos, cráneo
miqui. This is one of several masks fashioned out of human skulls on display in the Museo del Templo Mayor. It is thought that the "perforations present [in this example] possibly were used to insert hair or some element simulating it, since the deities of...death and the Underworld were characterized by having curly hair on their head." Photograph by Stephanie Wood, 15 Februry 2023.
miq(ui), to die, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/miqui
morir
Codex Mendoza, folio 43 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 96 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).
