eztli (TK217v)
This painted example of iconography refers to the blood (eztli) that emerges from the mouths or faces of two Nahua nobles (what we could call pipiltin, as the Spanish text describes them as “prencipales”). A Spaniard, Luis Baca, a servant of the factor (Spanish mercantile agent) in charge of collecting tribute from this town, Tepetlaoztoc (spelled Tepetlaoxtoc today), has been beating the pipiltin, and they are injured. The Spaniard wears black shoes, knee-high socks, red pants, a red shirt, and a dark blue belted jacket. His hat is red, and he has a sword in a sheath on his left hip. The injured Nahua men wear capes (what we could call tilmatli), a sign of their elite status. Baca is pulling the hair of the man closest to him. The other man’s hair is tousled, and he seems to be falling down (see the contextualizing image). The text, in Spanish, is a complaint about Baca’s mistreatment of these men and the challenges the town faces as a result of producing the tribute for him.
Stephanie Wood
Another iconographic example of blood appears below, where a Nahua man has been hit on the head with a log. In yet another, a man has been stoned and bleeds as a result. A woman bleeds from her mouth and other parts after being strangled. See these and other examples below, most of which entail conflict. However, for two self-sacrificial bloodletting examples, do a Quick Search for tlacoquixtia.
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 K15_B in his TLACHIA digital collection, https://tlachia.iib.unam.mx/tepetlaoztoc/K15_B.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1556
Jeff Haskett-Wood
colonialismo, resistencia, tributo, tributos, abusos, sangrienta, sangriento, sangriento, ensangrentado, conflicto, conflictos, batallas, flebotomía
ez(tli), blood, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/eztli
la sangre
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.
