Tecpaxihuitl (ATno6-1)

This black-line drawing of the simplex Nahuatl hieroglyph of a year sign for Flint-knife (Tecpaxihuitl) shows a round object with concentric circles and a scalloped edge, something like a flower. The scallops have a black dot in the middle. Inside the scallops is a thick black ring. Inside that is a white ring with smaller black dots. Then another black ring, and a white center with one black dot. The contextualizing image shows that the companion number to this flint knife is "6." Such numbers ran from 1 to 13. The context also shows that this Nahua date coincided with the European year 1524, early into the Spanish colonial enterprise, and five years after this particular annals manuscript starts recording history in this alphabetic format. The use of hieroglyphs for year signs, however, continued for a very long time alongside the adoption of the Roman alphabet by Nahua tlacuilos.