Nahui Coatl (MH579v)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph-plus-notation for the personal name Nahui Coatl (“Four-Serpent” or "4-Serpent") is attested here as a man’s name. It shows a coiled serpent in profile, facing toward the viewer's right. It has a rattle with two segments and spots on its body. Its bifurcated tongue protrudes. Its eye is closed. Four (nahui) short lines come off its head, providing the notation for this calendrical name.
Stephanie Wood
Coatl is a day sign in the 260-day calendar called the tonalpohualli. Calendrics played an important role in Nahuas' religious views of the cosmos. Four-Serpent or 4-Serpent is likely a name given to this man when he was born (on that date). Interestingly, the timing of this manuscript, which was presented in 1560, is when some calendrical names were dropping their numerical coefficient, but not this one. The way the notation is drawn, however, is not necessarily traditional.
Stephanie Wood
agustin.nahuicouatl
Agustín Nahui Coatl
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
snakes, serpents, serpientes, culebras, numbers, números, four, cuatro, dates, tonalpohualli, días, fechas, calendarios, fechas, cohuatl
nahui, four, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nahui
coa(tl), serpent or snake, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/coatl
Cuatro Serpiente, o 4-Serpiente
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 579v, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=238&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).
