Calli (ATno6-2)

This black-line drawing of the simplex Nahuatl hieroglyph of a year sign for Calli (House) shows a frontal view of a building with two walls and a roof. The building's roof line comes to points on the right and left. The roof and walls are white one row of nine small black circles going up one side, across the top, and down the other side. The contextualizing image shows that this is the year 2 Calli or 1533 in the European calendar. This alphabetic Nahuatl manuscript begins with events of 1519, so this is fourteen years into the accounting of what happened each year--what would be called the xiuhpohualli in Nahuatl, or annals in English. The Nahua tlacuilo is well adapted to the Roman alphabet, but he still includes hieroglyphs for the year signs. This practice continued for many years.