cactli (MH699r)
This black-line drawing of a shoe is here as an example of iconography, showing how the toes curl over the front of the sole. This sandal or shoe appears in profile, heading toward the viewer’s right. The sandal is white with a red tie. The five toes of the person who wears this sandal appear to curl downward.
Stephanie Wood
Like this example here, the xo (like ped-, a root relating to feet in English) glyphic element from the Codex Mendoza (f. 41r) also has the toes curling somewhat over the front of the cactli. But sometimes the toes are not so vulnerable, such as in the example from the Codex Mendoza folio 66r. The construction of the cactli generally does provide coverage for the heel (e.g., cactli Mdz2r and 13r). A mesh pattern will appear on the backs of some cactli, as found with the glyphs for Cachua (MH497r) and Caczoc (MH493r). Sometimes that part of the footwear is decorated with something like a quincunx (see Codex Ixtlilxochitl f. 107f (shown on the same page as our cactli (Mdz66r).
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
sandalias, huaraches, zapatos
cac(tli), a sandal or a shoe, footwear, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cactli
sandalia
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 699r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=478&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).
