tlacamecayotl (T1735:2:108)
This example of iconography is a simple genealogy (tlacamecayotl), in the form of black line drawings, with the heads of six people. A male and a female pair are at the top, and below them, in a vertical string, are a woman, followed individually by three men. The hair of the women is blacker than the hair of the men. A black line links all the heads together. Two of the faces are darker than the others, that of the woman of the originating couple and that of the first male in the line below them. A third face may be somewhat darker, too--that of the next to the last head in the string hanging down.
Stephanie Wood
There is no gloss confirming this is a tlacamecayotl, but the imagery includes people (tlacatl) and a cord (mecatl) connecting them, which makes the analysis fairly straight-forward. The suffix (-yotl) generalizes the group as having that relationship, as explained more fully in our Online Nahuatl Dictionary. This genealogy is included in a land document and therefore provides an indirect reference to inherited land, potentially huehuetlalli or huehuemilli. The word for an inheritance is nemactli. Gender is made clear by way of the hairstyles, with the women having their (blacker) hair come to two points over their foreheads. The darkened faces could be an intentional indicator that these people have passed away.
Stephanie Wood
Stephanie Wood
tlacamecayotl, ancestry, genealogy, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlacamecayotl
la genealogía, la ascendencia
Stephanie Wood
Single-page codex, Archivo General de la Nación, México, Ramo de Tierras, vol. 1735, exp. 2, fol. 108
The Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), México, holds the original manuscript. This image is published here under a Creative Commons license, asking that you cite the AGN and this Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs.