Xolotl · Chapter 1 of 5
The Dog-Headed Twin
A twin · A word with several senses · Pictures before names
The painted figure is old. The name on it came later.
Nahua tradition pairs him with Quetzalcoatl as a twin or a double, and he is drawn dog-headed, with torn ears and a stooped back. The word xolotl carries several senses at once — a dog, and also a servant or page, and it sits inside axolotl, the water-xolotl of the lake country. The pictures of him are pre-Hispanic; the texts that name him and tell his stories were written after the conquest. Attaching the one to the other is an argument, and worth knowing before any of it is repeated.
- Dog-headed
- A double
- A colonial record
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