⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-06

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

amatlacuilo.

Headword: 
amatlacuilo.
Principal English Translation: 

a writer or a painter who uses paper; or, an official writer, a scribe (see Molina), a notary

Alonso de Molina: 

amatlacuilo. escriuano.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 4v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

amatlacuilo = scribe, writer (or painter) on paper
Susan Kellogg, Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture, 1500–1700 (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 221.

amatlacuilo = escribano, scribe, or notary, or a secretary
Rebecca Horn's notecard file from Nahuatl study sessions with James Lockhart in the early 1980s.

quintemozq Omentin tipotantosme no omentin mayordomosme auh no çe onyez amatlacuillo = they will search for two diputados; also two mayordormos. Here will also be a notary.
Fray Alonso de Molina, Nahua Confraternities in Early Colonial Mexico: The 1552 Nahuatl Ordinances of fray Alonso de Molina, OFM, ed. and trans., Barry D. Sell (Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2002), 100–101.

This concept existed in preconquest Mexico and was associated with the nobility.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

amatlacuilo = tlacuilo, tlacuiloani, pintor, escritor, expresado [en jeroglíficos] por el pincel o instrumento que al caso servía
Manuel Orozco y Berra, Historia antigua y de la conquista de México (1960), 401.

themes: 
Art, Crafts
Occupations, Responsibilities
Paper
Writing, Literacy