Texolohua (MH553r)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Texolohua, attested here as a man’s name) shows a horizontal stone with its classic curling ends and alternating stripes. This could have a literal value, or a phonetic one. Above the stone is a profile view of the head of a dog called the xoloitzcuintli with protruding teeth, a turned up nose, and a seemingly open eye. The head of the dog also has vertical and horizontal intersecting lines at right angles, which remove it from the realm of just a pet and into the realm of the sacred force or ancestral Chichimec leader.
Stephanie Wood
Xolohua, a shorter version of this name, seems to refer to someone who has a servant or an enslaved person, which may come into play in the meaning. Further research is required. The name Texolohua was held by a Mexica noble, so perhaps it is borne here in memory of that famous person. [See: Jesús Monjarás-Ruiz, La nobleza mexica (1980), 84.]
Note the face paint on the Texolohua hieroglyph. Images of Ehecatl and Xolotl can have face paint, as shown in various glyphs in this collection, and this may be a sign of their divinity. Chalchiuhtlicue, also a divine force, used face paint, too. The latter was associated with the "double stroke glyph" called the "hua" syllable of possession, as identified by various scholars, most notably Alfonso Lacadena, as discussed by Danièle Dehouve in "The Rules of Construction of an Aztec Deity," in Ancient Mesoamerica 31 (2020), 14.
Stephanie Wood
texolovā
Texolohua
Stephanie Wood
1560
José Aguayo-Barragán and Stephanie Wood
tatuaje, pintura en la cara, perros, itzcuintles, piedras
te(tl), stone, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tetl
te-, nonspecific human object prefix or an impersonal possessive prefix, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/te
Xolotl, divine force of lightning and death, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xolotl
xolo, a servant or an enslaved person, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xolo
xoloitzcuin(tli), a native Mexican nearly hairless dog, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xoloitzcuintli
-hua, singular possession, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/hua
Él que Tiene un Xoloitzcuintli en Piedra
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 533r, World Digital Library. https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=185&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).
