Tezcacoacatl (MH692v)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name or ethnicity, Tezcacoacatl (“Person from Tezcacoatlan”), is attested here as pertaining to a man. The glyph shows a serpent (coatl) in profile, facing right, with its eye open and its bifurcating tongue protruding. The snake’s spotted body is coiled in one loop around a black obsidian mirror (tezcatl). The tail has a rattler.
Stephanie Wood
Two examples of glyphs referring to this same affiliation appear in the Codex Mendoza (below). A “home of Tezcacoatl” glyph also appears in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco on folio 709 recto.
Obsidian mirrors had a sacred value, having an association with the highest leadership and approved by the divine force called Tezcatlipoca (“The Mirror’s Smoke”). See Aztecs/Azteken, an exhibition catalogue, eds. Doris Kurella, Martin Berger and Inés de Castro, at the Linden Museum, Stuttgart; published by Hirmer Publishers of Germany and INAH of Mexico (2019, 309).
One can imagine the obsidian mirror as a tool for starting a fire. A mirror could be an adornment on clothing. It could be a practical or a spiritual way of looking at one's face. In this collection, one will notice that profile views are much favored over frontal views of faces. Perhaps frontal views were perceived to be too direct or too powerful for normal purposes. Looking at rulers, such as Motecuhzoma, in the face was something controlled, too, possibly because of his perceived divinity. Frontal views of faces are often found on glyphs such as teotl (divinity), tonatiuh (sun), tonalli (sun/day), deity sculptures (e.g., nenetl), skulls, and an occasional animal (e.g., especially the tecolotl, or owl, which may have been perceived to have special powers, given that the tlacatecolotl was a supernatural being). Specifically "face" (xayacatl) glyphs are sometimes given in a frontal view, too.
Stephanie Wood
gaspar tezcacovacatl
Gaspar Tezcacoacatl
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
snakes, serpents, serpientes, mirrors, espejos, cohuatl, barrios, pueblos, topónimos, etnicidades, nombres de hombres

tezca(tl), mirror, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tezcatl
coa(tl), snake/serpent, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/coatl
-ca(tl), a suffix indicating an affiliation or a title, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/catl
persona de Tezcacoatlan
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 692v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=465&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).
