amatl (Mdz16r)

The tie around the paper appears to be a rather generic, all-purpose twisted or braided material (see the bundle of cuezalin feathers below, right). The paper in this glyph appears pristine and ready for the various purposes for which paper was used (codices, stoles, loincloths, paper hair, paper flags, paper wings and other cuttings for ceremonies, paper for splattering with liquid rubber or blood, wrappers for the dead, etc.). If of the pre-contact type, it was made from the bark of a ficus tree. In the tribute lists, such as on folio 23 verso, a roll of paper much like this is said to be paper native to Mexico, and therefore amatl, not European paper. It is difficult to tell how long the paper roll is, but it had to be tied to retain the roll shape. As shown in our online Nahuatl Dictionary, the Florentine Codex speaks of a white piece of paper that was "a finger thick, a fathom wide, and twenty fathoms long." As an example, the Huexotzinco Codex, currently housed in the Library of Congress collections and created in Spanish colonial Mexico in the sixteenth century, was painted on amatl, as was the Codex Boturini, among others. If the bark paper came out dark, it was sometimes whitewashed. Some amatl was colored, as the yellow example in the Codex Mendoza shows.