octli (Mdz44r)
This element has been carved from the compound sign for the place name, Octlan. The mildly alcoholic beverage called (octli) (pulque in Spanish) appears in what is probably a ceramic or gourd bowl, painted a terracotta color here. In this digitally carved glyph, there might have been more mounds of foam where we cut out the visual for the -tlan locative suffix.
Stephanie Wood
The foam bubbles up above the level of the top of the vessel. Foam was (and still is) a prized aspect of various beverages in Mesoamerican cultures. Yacametztli is the name for the symbol on the side of the vessel. This marking regularly appears on containers of pulque, as attested in our iconographic support from the Codex Mendoza.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
alcoholic beverages, cups, bowls, alcohol, pulque, bebidas
oc(tli), pulque in Spanish, an alcoholic beverage, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/octli
pulque, an alcoholic beverage
el pulque
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 44 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 98 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).
