ozomatli (TR8r)
This example of the element of a monkey (ozomatli) comes from a date in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. It shows the head of a monkey in profile, looking toward the viewer's right. The monkey's face is primarily red with a white, wide-open and round eye, and protruding white teeth. The hair on its head is full, rounded, and purple, coming to a point in the front. Its ear is red with a green ear plug or earring. The monkey wears a two-part, bound, orange and white, device on its head.
Stephanie Wood
The glyph for monkey very typically shows the hair (tzontli) on the top of its head standing up, and sometimes the hair is long and thick, and so very noticeable. Perhaps this portrayal of hair is meant to serve as a phonetic complement for the "zom" (from tzontli) in the middle of the word ozoma. The ozomatli is a day sign in the 260-day calendar called the tonalpohualli, so it was given as a name to babies born on its day. There was also a divine force or deity named Ozomatli, which, according to Desmond Morris (Monkey, 2013, 41), was "the companion spirit and servant of the god Xochipilli, the deity of music and dance. In paintings it is depicted dressed in malinalli herbs and with white, oval earrings with pointed ends." The wide-open eye of this particular version of ozomatli is also found in other manuscripts and may be, along with the hair, a diagnostic.
Stephanie Wood
ozomatli
ca. 1550–1563
Jeff Haskett-Wood
monkeys, monos, calendarios, tonalpohualli, días, deidades, deities, divinities, divine forces, ozomatli, nombres de hombres
ozomat(li), a monkey, a calendrical marker, a person's name
https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ozomatli
Telleriano-Remensis Codex, folio 8 recto, MS Mexicain 385, Gallica digital collection, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8458267s/f41.item.zoom
The non-commercial reuse of images from the Bibliothèque nationale de France is free as long as the user is in compliance with the legislation in force and provides the citation: “Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France” or “Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF.”
