ichtecqui (Mdz71r)
This simplex glyph for the noun ichtecqui, thief, actually depicts a cutting action (tequi, the verb meaning to cut) that involves a curved, black flint blade. The blade appears to be cutting off some hair from a tzontli pony tail. A pair of front teeth are faintly visible at the top of the tzontli, as though the artist/writer was originally going to create a glyph that would involve the locative suffix -tlan (from tlantli, teeth). This glyph involves black line drawings without any added color.
Stephanie Wood
The cutting action provides the phonetic value tequi, which is a clue to the noun ichtecqui, ladrón or thief. In another glyph for ichtecqui, we see a person opening a box as though about to steal something. The visuals for these glyphs could equally stand for the verb, ichtequi, to steal. Further, one suspects that the cutting of the hair might have been a punishment for stealing, given that Ixtlilxochitl mentions the cutting of hair as a punishment (see: Jerome A. Offner Law and Politics in Aztec Texcoco, 1983, 266).
Stephanie Wood
ladron
ladrón (thief, in English)
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
ichtecqui, thief, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ichtecqui
ichtequi, to steal, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ichtequi
tequi, to cut, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tequi
Codex Mendoza, folio 71 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 152 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)
