etl (Mdz52r)
This element has been carved from the compound glyph for the place name, Mictlan or Miquetlan. It is a single bean (etl), a black oval with a white spot along the top edge. It is tipped up at an angle.
Stephanie Wood
This bean has a phonetic function, to provide the "e" sound for the Miquetlan version of Mictlan. Its meaning remains unclear in the compound glyph, so it could be a logogram with a semantic function. This bean is obviously a black bean, but the Nahuas have many types of beans, as the expression in our dictionary, "nepapan etl" (varieties of beans or legumes) conveys, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nepapan-etl. Beans were (and still are) a staple in the Nahua diet, an excellent source of protein. They were also an item paid in tributes-in-kind in the sixteenth century, as the Codex Mendoza shows well. See, for example, the "troxes de frisoles y de chian," on folio 44 recto.
Stephanie Wood
Stephanie Wood
by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
David Elliott made the SVG image.
bean, beans, legumes, protein
e(tl), bean, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/etl
black bean
el frijol
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 52 recto, https://codicemendoza.inah.gob.mx/inicio.php?lang=english
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, hold the original manuscript, the MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1. This image is published here under the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0).