calmecac (Mdz61r)
This iconographic example of a calmecac (school) is included here as a comparison for other buildings, crenellation, shells, and more. The building shown here is an elaborate calli (house or building), hence the cal- start to the name for the schoolhouse. This building is shown in a typical profile view, this time facing toward the viewer's left. It can face right or left. The T-shaped, terracotta-colored beams at the entrance are typical, except for the added color at the base of the vertical beam. These colors are shown in short horizontal stripes of turquoise blue, red, green, and yellow. The roof has what appear to be designs involving cross sections of shells. Below these, on the facade just below the roof, there are two rows of circles, 22 in all.
Stephanie Wood
The section view of a shell motif along the top of the building is similar to the shell motif in the Codex Magliabechiano (1970, folio 3v), which decorates a ritual mantle, according to Patricia Rieff Anawalt in The Codex Mendoza, vol. 1, p. 141. The one in the Magliabechiano is inverted and includes an extension of the shell to a pointed conclusion. A conch shell on folio 3 verso of the Magliabechiano has more of a spiral inside and a shape more akin to the shells that appear below and the spiral on the Tetlacuilo name glyph. The spiraling symbols in both types of shell recall speech/song, and therefore they may represent the sound that one hears when putting the shell up to the ear.
Stephanie Wood
calmecac
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
schools, escuelas, buildings, edificios, arquitectura, conchas, colores, círculos
calemacac, academy for youth, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/calmecac
Codex Mendoza, folio 61 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 132 of 188.
Original manuscript is held by the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1; used here with the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0)
