tenextlati (MH827r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the occupation of the tenextlati (“lime maker”) is attested here as a man’s name. The glyph shows an oven for burning limestone. It has two dark openings at its base. Above the base is a tall chimney made from bricks (perhaps adobe, three to four wide and for layers high). The chimney is as wide as the oven. Coming out of the top of the chimney are what appear to be flames, suggesting an active process.
Stephanie Wood
The gloss has a final “c” on the term for tenextlati, the occupation. This may be inadvertent or intrusive, but research might clarify this. Meanwhile, see Ian Mursell’s short study of Nahua lime making, which is free on line, published in Mexicolore. Our digital collection here has a considerable number of glyphs that illuminate the process of making lime (“cal” in Spanish), along with the transport and tributes paid in lime. See below. All of this suggests that a lot of construction was going on at the time of this manuscript (1560), probably more for arriving Spaniards than for the Indigenous population, which was being hit frightfully hard by epidemics.
Stephanie Wood
tenestlatic
tenextlati
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
hornos, ladrillos, adobes, hacer cal, construcción
tenextlati, one who works to transform limestone into lime (for construction projects), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tenextlati
Fabricante de Cal
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 827r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=728&st=image.
This manuscript is hosted by the Library of Congress and the World Digital Library; used here with the Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SAq 3.0).