Ixtlil (MH626r)

Ixtlil (MH626r)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Ixtlil (perhaps "Black Face") is attested here as a man's name. It shows the head of a man in profile, looking toward the viewer's right. A large black (tlilli) spot appears on the man's cheekbone, not on the eye, which pushes the reading more toward face than eye. The term ixtli can refer to either eye or face.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

Ixtlil seems to mean more “Black Face” than “Black Eye,” but it could be either. This name seems to be short for Ixtlilton, “Little Black Face,” the name of a deity or divine force, also known as Tlaltecuin or Tlaltetecuini, "Earth-Stamper,” who, as we note in the Online Nahuatl Dictionary, “belonged with the Macuiltonaleque, the young solar deities who presided over flowers, feasting, singing, dancing, gaming, and painting and who bore the names of the five tonalpohualli (260-day religious divinatory calendar) days assigned to the south, with numerical coefficients of five (the number signifying ‘excess’). Their most prominent member was Macuilxochitl, ‘Five Flower.’" See: Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 101.] One also wonders if this name could be an apocopation of the fuller name, Ixtlilxochitl, borne by rulers of Tetzcoco.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

partasal
yxtlil

Gloss Normalization: 

Baltazar Ixtlil

Date of Manuscript: 

1560

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Huejotzingo, Puebla

Semantic Categories: 
Syntax: 
Writing Features: 
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Jeff Haskett-Wood

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

colors, colores, negro, caras, faces, black, nombres de hombres, cara negra, Ixtlilxochitl

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 
Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation: 

Cara Negra

Spanish Translation, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Image Source: 

Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 626r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=334&st=image.

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: