Matlactli Omei Tecpatl (Mdz2r)
This combined simplex glyph and notation for the solar year (xihuitl) Thirteen Flint Knife (Matlactli Omei Tecpatl) consists of a boxed in glyph of a flint knife (tecpatl) with five ones to the left, five ones to the right, and three ones above the knife. Separations make these groupings clear. A black-line drawing (just barely visible in the image here) boxes in the date. The entire box and its contents are painted turquoise blue (xihuitl), intentionally using a visual homophone for year (xihuitl). The small circles representing ones do not have dots or smaller concentric circles as are sometimes found in other ones. The knife is upright and has a diagonal line dividing it into two parts, not quite equal halves.
Stephanie Wood
The ones or counters are presented like a mathematical equation, 5 + 3 + 5 = 13. Sometimes the arrangements of ones will vary. But the gaps between the groupings here coincide neatly as visual ligatures that could stand for the "plus" signs in the equation. The result of the addition will be the same, regardless of the reading order in this case, but some research still needs to be done on reading order of notations. The oral and alphabetic language for thirteen only includes one ligature (om), between the ten (matlactli) and the three (eyi), but the visual rendering of thirteen has two ligatures, five plus three plus five. Finally, some flint knives are seen as painted two colors, red on the top and white on the bottom. In those cases, the red might symbolize blood, suggesting these knives were used for making sacrificial offerings.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
numbers, números, fechas, dates, calendarios, calendars, pedernales, xiuhpohualli, año, turquesa, xihuitl
matlac(tli), ten, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/matlactli
eyi, three, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/eyi
Trece Pedernal, 13-Pedernal
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio, 02 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 14 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).
