tizatl (Mdz52r)
This element for chalk (tizatl) has been carved from the compound glyph of the place name, Tlaltizapan. The component that refers to chalk has a white background and black dots. It fills a shape similar to the shape of a tepetl (hill or mountain).
Stephanie Wood
While this sign for chalk has a hill or mountain shape (something like tepetl, the black dots on a white background can take other shapes in other compounds where it appears. There are several chalk-related glyphs in this collections, as our attestations show. It is also worth noting that sand (xalli) can be confused with tizatl, both with its colorless and dotted effect and its ability to take various shapes. The color white fills a hill or mountain shape in a similar way in the compound Iztac Tlalocan elsewhere in this collection.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
Crystal Boulton-Scott made the SVG.
tiza(tl), chalk, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tizatl
chalk
la tiza
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 52 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 114 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).
