yohualli (Mdz40r)
This element has been carved from the compound sign for the place name, Yohualtepec. It shows a night (yohualli) sky in a half-circle or oval shape painted purple or dark gray. This dark background has U-shapes that resemble the markings on various kinds of agricultural parcels (tlalli, milli, chinamitl). In the center of the sky is one large starry or stellar eye (red and white, with the heavy lid). And below the lower edge of the sky are three more (attached) starry eyes.
Stephanie Wood
The suggestion is that the eyes are stars in the night (yohualli) sky, looking down upon the people of the earth. The rounded shape of the night sky might be suggested by a conceptualization of the sky as round, or perhaps there is a hint of a near homophone at play--yahualli (round).
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Xitlali Torres
Codex Mendoza, folio 40 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 90 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).
