acalotli (Osu7r)
This painted example of iconography shows a canal (acalotli) that the Nahuas had to dig (motatacac) in Iztapalapan. The humble workers, called the macehualtin in the Nahuatl text, did not get paid for their work, and so this seems to be a protest. The canal, painted blue, has a Y shape that ends, on the right side, at a square body of water. The contextualizing image shows how the repository of water is near a colonial Christian church, which gives a sense of the enormous size of the ditch that had to be dug for the canal. The church is not far from the base of a mountain, which may have been the source of a natural spring, but there were also lakes in this region from which water could be redirected for canals.
Stephanie Wood
Our Online Nahuatl Dictionary has many short discussions in Nahuatl (with English and Spanish translations) about canals in the Valley of Mexico. They were important for transportation, irrigation, even for strategic maneuvers during warfare. The original image of the canal here was nearly covered up with Spanish-language text, which has now been digitally cleaned (but retained in the contextualizing image). The idea of including examples of iconography such as this canal and reservoir in this digital collection is for the purpose of understanding shapes, colors, and details that could be useful when trying to decipher Nahuatl hieroglyphs. As of June 2026, however, this collection still lacks a hieroglyph of an acalotli. This bird’s eye view is rare in hieroglyphs of canals. Usually, the glyphs (often of the apantli, another name for canal) are cross sections, showing a bit about the construction of the sides that contain them.
Stephanie Wood
acalotli
Stephanie Wood
1551–1565
Jeff Haskett-Wood
agua, canales, acequia, acequias, sanja, zanjas, transporte, viajar
acalo(tli), canal, watersay, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/acalotli
el canal
Stephanie Wood
Library of Congress Online Catalog and the World Digital Library, Osuna Codex, or Painting of the Governor, Mayors, and Rulers of Mexico, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_07324/. The original is located in the Biblioteca Nacional de España.
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