Chicuei Cipactli (FCbk4f7r)
This colorful painting of a simplex glyph-plus-notation has as its focus the date Chicuei Cipactli ("Eight Crocodile," or 8-Crocodile), in the religious divinatory calendar called the tonalpohualli. The glyph is the head of an animal, apparently meant to be a crocodilian monster (cipactli). It is shown in profile, facing the viewer's right. Its large, somewhat starry eye is open. Its mouth shows a lot of teeth and a protruding red tongue. Its nose is long but pointed up at a right angle from its mouth, and just below the point is a red ring. Additionally, four arrow points come up from the animal's head, two behind the eye, one on the eye, and one in front of the eye. Connecting to the tongue is the notation for the number eight (chicuei), represented as a horizontal row of five small circles and a row of three, all connected by lines. The small circles are painted a dark blue or purple color. This is one of four dates that appear together in a box. Typically a single date would be boxed.
Stephanie Wood
While the head of this cipactli is unusual, somewhat reminiscent of the ehecatl day name in this same manuscript (below), the arrows do have a parallel in some other glyphs from the Matrícula de Huexotzinco of 1560 that are full of pointed protrusions (see below).
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
day sign, calendarios, días, fechas, tonalpohualli, animales, caimanes, cipac
chicuei, eight, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/chicuei
cipac(tli), crocodile, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cipactli
Ocho Caimán, 8-Caimán
Stephanie Wood
Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_10615/?sp=15&st=image
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