tecomatl (Mdz47r)
This iconographic example taken from the Codex Mendoza is meant to provide a comparison for the elements of the tecomatl (cup, tecomate in Mexican Spanish) that are in this digital collection. This example has a cup-like shape, and it could be ceramic. Where the liquid might be held, there is a stone (tetl), seemingly meant as a phonetic reinforcement for the te- at the start of tecomatl. The cup and the stone are entirely of the one terracotta-like color.
Stephanie Wood
Our Online Nahuatl Dictionary provides many examples of uses for this cup, including as a vessel for alcoholic beverages and for a thick hot chocolate beverage. Tecomates, as they came to be called in Mexican Spanish, were regular items found in alphabetic, Nahuatl-language testaments, and therefore considered valuable parts of a person's estate that were worth passing on to the next generation.
James Lockhart noted a possible connection between the cuezcomatl and the comitl (ceramic jug). One can also see a phonetic relationship between the cuezcomatl and the tecomatl (ceramic cup).
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
stones, piedras, tecomates, copas, cups, jarras, cerámica, barro
tecoma(tl), cup, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tecomatl
te(tl), stone(s), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tetl
taza de barro
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 47 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 104 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)
