Tochtli (ATno6-2)
This black-line drawing of the simplex Nahuatl hieroglyph of the rabbit year sign (Tochtli) appears in association with the European calendar year 1542 as "11 Tochtli xihuitl." The rabbit year signs in this manuscript vary. This one, which is just the head, is shown in profile and facing the viewer's right. It has its ears back (horizontally), and its visible eye is open. The edges of the ears, face, and the back of the neck have hatch marks that suggest three-dimensionality (a learned artistic technique taught by the colonizers). The rabbit's neck is cut off with a flat, horizontal line, but hanging down from this line are what appear to be four drops with hatching that makes they appear to have a dark color. Perhaps they represent blood.
Stephanie Wood
In the Nahua calendrical system, the rabbit had the dual role as a day sign and a year sign. The four year signs were house (calli), rabbit (tochtli), reed (acatl), and flint-knife (tecpatl). There were twenty day names, and their companion numbers, which rotated, ran from 1 to 13. The first entry with a significant text in this alphabetic Nahuatl annals manuscript is 1519, the year of the Spanish landing in what would become Veracruz. The use of hieroglyphs for year signs in the annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla region continued for a very long time alongside the use of the Roman alphabet by Nahua tlacuilos.
This possibly decapitated rabbit head is slightly reminiscent of the calendrical signs in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. In that manuscript, the base of stand-alone hears have red and yellow scalloped edges that are reminiscent of the distinctive red and yellow access points to bodily and earthly interiors discussed in the article on the left-hand navigation bar. They may point to the artist's familiarity with the way neck edges appear when an animal is decapitated.
Stephanie Wood
tochtli xihuitl
Tochtli xihuitl
Stephanie Wood
c. 1720, at the latest
Stephanie Wood
Frances Krug, conejos, signo de año, signos de años, nombre de año, nombres de años, glifo, glifos, jeroglífico, jeroglíficos, calendario, calendarios, sangre, gota, gotas, fecha, fechas, anales, xiuhpohualli
toch(tli), rabbit, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tochtli
el conejo
Stephanie Wood
Anales de Tlaxcala, 1519–1720. From a photocopy provided to Frances Krug by the Archivo Histórico del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Currently in the Krug collection.
Creative Commons. Permission to publish here was given by BNAH Director Baltazar Brito.
