chimalli (MH616v)
This black-line drawing of the simplex Nahuatl hieroglyph for the noun, chimalli (war shield), doubles as the simplex glyph of the personal name, Mochimalcecelo (see below). Note the quincunx shape in the center of the shield, seemingly formed by down feather balls (probably tlachcayotl, organized into a war shield design called ihuiteteyo. This design had an association with the capital city of Tenochtitlan.
Stephanie Wood
Frances Berdan and Patricia Anawalt (The Codex Mendoza, 1992, vol. 1, Appendix G) discuss the ihuiteteyo shield design. It can come in different colors. Sometimes the symbols on this design are taken for shells. An article by Ian Mursell in Mexicolore and citing the same authors, reminds us that the elements are down feather balls, which have associations with death. Mursell also quotes John Pohl, saying that the war shield was very personal, it "represented the warrior’s soul, and would generally be burned at the funeral of a dead man." Additionally, we learn from The Codex Mendoza: New Insights (2022, 24), that "the tlacuiloque [of Tenochtitlan[ drew and painted a total of eleven ihuiteteyo designs, one for each one of the rulers of the city."
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
shields, rodelas, escudos
chimal(li), shield, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/chimalli
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 616v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=315st=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).
