Matlalcoatl (MH852r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Matlalcoatl (perhaps “Blue-Green Snake”) is attested here as a man’s name. The glyph shows a bird’s eye view of a matlalin flower (which could be blue-green if it were painted here) and a semi-coiled snake (coatl) with a protruding bifurcated tongue and a rattler at the end of its tail.
Stephanie Wood
The matlalin flower often has three petals with tiny pointed leaves between them. But, in one case this flower has four petals and it is painted a beautiful turquoise blue with a pink center. (See below.) That the matlalin flower may have what was perceived by Nahuas as a quincunx-cosmic shape is suggested by the example from MH608r.
Stephanie Wood
torio matlalcouatl
Toribio Matlalcoatl
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
flores, pétalos, quincunce, cósmico, nombres de hombres
matlal(in), a special, blue-green flower or the color name itself, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/matlalin
coa(tl), a serpent or snake, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/coatl
Serpiente Verde-Azul
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 852r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=776&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).
