maitl (Mdz29r)
This element for hand/arm (maitl) has been carved from the compound sign for the place name, Xomeyocan. It comes reaching from the viewer's left. It is terracotta colored. Judging by the location of the thumb, it is a right hand.
Stephanie Wood
According to Gordon Whittaker, we should pay attention to the upright hand without an arm attached versus the more horizontal or diagonal arm, which can have readings other than maitl), such as the "ma" of capture, "ana" of grab, or "poloa" of destroy (see: (Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs, 2021, 104.) In the original compound hieroglyph from which this hand was carved, the hand is holding onto a leaf of a plant, as though it is going to take the leaf, so the reading could be ma, a verb, for "to take" or "to capture." But the hand itself brings the same reading—"ma"—as the stem of maitl, so the two readings reinforce each other. It is not very unusual to see "a" for "e" in various Nahuatl words.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
hands, arms, manos, brazos
mai(tl), hand or arm, and a measurement, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/maitl
ma(tl), hand or arm, and a measurement, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/matl
ma, to take or capture, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ma
la mano
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 29 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 68 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).