Temachti (MH576r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Temachti (“He Teaches" or He Preaches,” attested here as a man’s name) shows a frontal view of an open, European-style book. This book is bound in the middle, with some pages on the left and some on the write. Writing on the two visible pages is indicated with short black markings.
Stephanie Wood
Nahuas had screen-folded books, not bound books such as this one, until after Spanish colonization. Glyphs relating to books often show writing in this way, with neither alphabetic words nor glyphs represents, just black marks, as shown below. Stephen Houston, in an online lecture in April 2023, also said that when the practice and result of writing is indicated in Mayan hieroglyphs is it not legible. However, some Nahua glyphs for tlacuilolli and icuilolli (writing/painting) on what may be screen-folded manuscripts do seem to show us simple glyphs about writing, speech, or paintings, the latter seemingly indicating flowers. A couple of these additional examples also appear below.
Stephanie Wood
miguel.temachti
Miguel Temachti
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
books, learning, libros, aprendizaje, teachers, maestros, maestras, predicadores, sacerdotes, curas
temachti, to teach or preach, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/temachtia
temachtiani, teacher, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/temachtiani
Él Enseña, o Él Predica
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 576r, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=231&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).
