ixtli (Mdz21v)
This element for eye(s) (ixtli) has been carved from the compound sign for the place name, Matixco. It is a single eye, with a red eyelid coming down half way across the eye ball. The pupil is outlined in black, but shows no color, and the iris is white.
Stephanie Wood
Eyes have a strong visual overlap with stars. Nahuas may have seen stars as the eyes of the night sky, peering down at humans on earth. See the glyph for night [yohual(li)], for examples. Human eyes, when depicted as being on a face do not necessarily have the same appearance as the eye in this element, as can be seen in any number of faces that appear in the Codex Mendoza and other manuscripts. It is important here to point out that the eye is not the intended meaning in the compound glyph from which this element has been carved. Rather, what is meant is the postposition -ixco (or -tixco, when the t ligature is there to separate two vowels). This is a locative suffix meant to be read phonetically and tell where. The eye points to "on the surface of" or "in front of."
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
ix(tli), eye, eyes, face, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ixtli
-ixco (locative suffix, on the surface of, in front of), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ixco
eye (ixtli) and "on the surface of, in front of" (-(t)ixco) [Gordon Whittaker, Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs, 2021, 105]
IX(TLI) or (T)IXCO
el ojo (ixtli), o delante de o en la superficie de
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 21 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 53 of 188.
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).
