Teoxoch (MH524v)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Teoxoch (here, attested as a woman’s name) shows a frontal view of an upright flower (xochitl) with stem and leaves. The flower has three petals and two anthers. On the front of the lower part of the blossom, a face is drawn. The face includes eyebrows, eyes, a nose, and a mouth. The face seems to be meant to draw to mind the word teotl (divine force, deity).
Stephanie Wood
This is an interesting glyph for those seeking to probe the meanings of teotl and their evolution in a Christian colonial context. Another compound for the name Teoxoch (also a woman's name) uses a stone to bring forth the Teo- syllable. One compound for Xochiteotl (there, a man's name) uses that same economy, in both cases avoiding any visual depiction of teotl, while another shows a face peeking up from behind the flower. The use of a face here to represent divinity seems to show European influence.
In some flowers, such as this one, the anthers are rather pronounced. The anthers are the flower parts that produce and provide the pollen, which has the reproductive capacity that has been compared in Western cultures to semen.
Stephanie Wood
magdarena teoxoch
Magdalena Teoxoch
Stephanie Wood
1560
Stephanie Wood
flowers, flores, deidades, deities, divine forces, fuerzas divinas, nombres de hombres
teo(tl), a divine or sacred force, a deity, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/teotl
xochi(tl)flower, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xochitl
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 524v, World Digital Library.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=128&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).
