tlalli (Mdz51r)
This element of a tlalli (piece of agricultural land) has been carved from the compound sign for the place name, Teotlalpan. This tlalli is a horizontal strip that has alternating segments of orange and purple (the same colors of stones). The segmenting might imply parceling. The segments all have dots along the edges and sideways U-shapes down the middle. Perhaps these markings suggest cultivation (such as perforations with the huictli tool and seeds?).
Stephanie Wood
Sometimes, in the Codex Mendoza, tlalli will be only the purplish gray color, not always segmented with the alternating orange pieces. But it is usually shown in strips, unless it is combined with other elements that inhibit that shape. In terms of perspective, the norm is a bird's eye view. In other manuscripts, such as the Matrícula de Huexotzinco (MH), of nearly two decades later and removed from the Valley of Mexico, tlalli glyphs can be square and circular. Sometimes the circular plots are divided on a diagonal line. Sometimes the tlalli glyphs in the MH are textured and sometimes plain. See below for some examples.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
tierras, sementeras, naranja, morado, punteado
The rectangle on the lower edge of this image from plate 20 of the Codex Borgia (pre-contact) shows what is an agricultural piece of land, given the maize plants growing up from it. Like the Codex Mendoza tlalli, milli, and chinamitl iconography, this one is separated into what may be parcels with alternating terracotta and dark gray coloration. What is different about each possible parcel are the lines for what may be furrows that alternate perpendicularly from the next one. This is similar to the chinampas that alternate in the map from San Pedro Tlahuac in our Mapas Project. Elizabeth Hill Boone has also noted this alternation in chinampas in Painted Words: Nahua Catholicism, Politics, and Memory in the Atzaqualco Pictorial Catechism, Boone, Burkhart, and Tavárez eds., Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2017, 48 and 72. Codex Borgia image thanks to Mexicolore. Also, thanks to James Maffie for bringing these comparisons to the fore (personal communication 13 March 2025).
tlal(li), land, agricultural parcel, Earth, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlalli
land, earth
la tierra, la sementera
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 51 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 112 of 118.
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).
