Miquiz (MH520r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name (Diego) Miquiz shows a frontal view of a human skull. The skull has two black holes for eyes and a row of teeth at the base. The cavity at the site of what was a nose is gray. Small hash marks (a hint of shading) provide a sense of the shape of the face.
Stephanie Wood
Miquiztli (death) is a day sign in the 260-day divinatory calendar called the tonalpohualli. So, the man named Agustín Miquiz may have born on that day. But we do not have the numerical value that would have accompanied the death sign, a number from 1 to 13. The number may have faded from use or perhaps it was suppressed to disguise the name's association with the divinatory calendar.
The iconography of miquiztli and related word will vary considerable across manuscripts. One example, below, is very colorful. The glyph shown below for the verb "to die" (miqui) has what is called a starry or stellar eye, which associates it with the celestial realm. Calendrics were important in the Nahuas' religious view of the cosmos.
Stephanie Wood
dio miquiz
Diego Miquiz
Stephanie Wood
1560
Stephanie Wood
death, muerte, calendarios, días, dates, fechas, calendars
miquiz(tli), death, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/miquiztli
Muerte
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 520r, World Digital Library.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=119&st=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).
