Xiuhtli (MH827r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Xiuhtli (“Comet”) is attested here as a man’s name. The glyph shows what must be a frontal view of a vertical comet that is painted red. It has at the top what looks like a round head with two eyes, and a worm or snake-like body with wavy lines. On the left and the right of this serpent-like body are four small circles in rows aligning with the body. They are also painted red.
Stephanie Wood
In several glyphs for the personal name Xiuhtli (below), short lines or rays come off worm- or serpent-shaped bodies, so perhaps these red dots represent shimmer, a variant on the rays. The comet in this collection that comes from the Codex Telleriano-Remensis is clearly a serpent. This popular name, Xiuhtli, is linked to the religious calendar of years, because it was a name given to boys born during the time of the binding ceremony at the end of every fifty-two year cycle. Given that both xiuhtli (comet) and xihuitl (year, turquoise, etc.) have the same stem (xiuh-) it makes sense that the iconography might overlap. Some glyphs for xiuhtli have visuals that appear to intend a reading of xihuitl (for turquoise tesserae), although these may be visual homophones. These also appear below.
Stephanie Wood
peo. xiuhtli
Pedro Xiuhtli
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
serpientes, gusanos, rojo, cometas, nombres de hombres
xiuh(tli), a comet, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xiuhtli
Cometa
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 827r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=728&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).
