comalli (TK214v)
This painted simplex Nahuatl hieroglyph represents a pottery griddle (comalli). It was listed on codex folio as one of many types of tribute in kind that had to be paid by the people of the altepetl of Tepetlaoztoc to the Spanish colonial overlord. This manuscript was produced as part of the community’s resistance to the unreasonable taxation being demanded vis-a-vis the size of the community, especially as the population was declining as a result of diseases inadvertently brought over from Europe. The comalli is shown in a bird’s eye view, as a large terracotta-colored circle, with an inner concentric circle that gives it a lip. This griddle was found in every household in those days, and certain communities with good clay specialized in making the comalli. The tlaxcalli, which Spaniards called a “little cake” (tortilla) right at the start of the invasion of 1519, was a Mexican staple cooked on the comalli for centuries.
Stephanie Wood
To see the comalli listed as a tribute requirement suggests that the tlaxcalli was working its way into the cuisine of Spaniards fairly quickly, even as they eventually planted wheat and continued to love bread. Spanish invaders in 1519, probably getting off the ships hungry, soon became aware of the flat corn bread they came to call the “tortilla” (which translates loosely as “little cake”), even though it differed from tortas in Spain. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, for example, reports eating tortillas with red peppers, herbs, and the fruit of the nopal cactus (The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, 1912, 159).
Side Note: The folio numbers are not always clear in the copy published online by the British Museum. Marc Thouvenot gives this page the number K12_B in his TLACHIA digital collection, https://tlachia.iib.unam.mx/tepetlaoztoc/K12_B.
Stephanie Wood
comales
Stephanie Wood
c. 1556
Jeff Haskett-Wood
comales, comida, cocina, maíz, platos, tributo, tributos, colonialismo, resistencia
comal(li), comal, a griddle for cooking tortillas, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/comalli
el comal
Stephanie Wood
The Codex Kingsborough, also known as the Códice de Tepetlaoztoc, and the Memorial de los indios de Tepetlaoztoc, is not on display. It was transferred from the British Library and is now held by the British Museum. It is shared on line at: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Am2006-Drg-13964
©The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. Please also cite the <em>Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphsem>, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities Projects, 2020-present) and this URL.
