Tlalicuilol (MH551r)

Tlalicuilol (MH551r)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Tlalicuilol (“Land-Written?” attested here as a man’s name) shows a bird's eye view of a rectangular land parcel with an unusual amount of decoration, including a frame around it that contains small circles, reminiscent of the circles with dots in them on the glyph for the name Tlaltzon, circles that decorate a ruler's palace (tecpan) or the droplets or beads that splash off of streams of water. Inside the rectangle are many dots, seemingly suggesting cultivation. Above the rectangle is a human hand in profile holding what may be a writing implement or a digging stick. The implement goes from the hand down to the land.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

See other glyphs for tlacuilolli, tlacuilol, amatlacuilol, mocuemicuilo, tetlacuilol, Tlacuilollan, etc.

Marc Thouvenot identifies the verb icuiloa (or ihcuiloa, with the glottal stop), which means to paint, write, or print, as having a root of -cuil-. He notes how it also appears in tlacuiloliztli (writing), tlacuilo (writer), and cuicuiltic (mottled). He goes on to show various uses of icuiloa that take it beyond the simple definitions just given, resulting in something like the action of creating a design (e.g., on leather, ceramics, sculpture, or in textiles). It can also be something like the action of decorating (e.g., to put a flower on a cup of atole). He associates icuiloa and tlacuilolli with "cultural artifacts," such as arts and crafts or examples of writing and painting, but cuicuiltic with effects created by "nature." This short summary barely does his article justice; it is worth reading the entire piece. How Thouvenot's study might connect with the concept of bent or curved mentioned by Prem (1974: 555, 682) raises an interesting question. Perhaps the bent or curved lines of writing, painting, carving, embroidery, and so on, fall with in the realm of expressions of -cuil-. See
Marc Thouvenot, "Imágenes y escritura entre los nahuas del inicio del XVI," Estudios de Cultural Náhuatl 41 (2010).

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

pedro tlalicuilol

Gloss Normalization: 

Pedro Tlalicuilol

Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Date of Manuscript: 

1560

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Huejotzingo, Puebla, Mexico

Semantic Categories: 
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation): 
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
Keywords: 

land parcels, tierras, writing, escritura, escribir, cultivar

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 
Image Source: 
Image Source, Rights: 

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).

Historical Contextualizing Image: