alcalde mayor (CST18)
This is a painting of a colonial government scene that is included here for its iconographic elements. The scene includes an alcalde mayor (a Spanish loanword that entered Nahuatl and refers to the highest Spanish colonial magistrate of a district) in a frontal view, seated at a table. The alcalde mayor has a notary (escribano) on one side and an interpreter (nahuatlato), on the other. These men with the alcalde mayor might also be Spaniards. The alcalde mayor wears a red jacket (more prestigious), and the other two men have brown coats. They all wear hats of different types, and they all have beards. It appears that the table also has writing implements, ink, and paper.
Stephanie Wood
For more on the Codex Sierra, see Kevin Terraciano’s study (2021).
Stephanie Wood
1550–1564
Jeff Haskett-Wood
escrituras, oficios, oficiales coloniales
alcalde mayor, a Spanish colonial official, the highest magistrate of a district, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/alcalde-mayor
alcalde mayor
Stephanie Wood
Códice Sierra-Texupan, plate 18, page dated 1558. Origin: Santa Catalina Texupan, Mixteca Alta, State of Oaxaca. Kevin Terraciano has published an outstanding study of this manuscript (Codex Sierra, 2021), and in his book he refers to alphabetic and “pictorial” writing, not hieroglyphic writing. We are still counting some of the imagery from this source as hieroglyphic writing, but we are also including examples of “iconography” where the images verge on European style illustrations or scenes showing activities. We have this iconography category so that such images can be fruitfully compared with hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphic writing was evolving as a result of the influence of European illustrations, and even alphabetic writing impacted it.
https://bidilaf.buap.mx/objeto.xql?id=48281&busqueda=Texupan&action=search
The Biblioteca Digital Lafragua of the Biblioteca Histórica José María Lafragua in Puebla, Mexico, publishes this Códice Sierra-Texupan, 1550–1564 (62pp., 30.7 x 21.8 cm.), referring to it as being in the “Public Domain.” This image is published here under a Creative Commons license, asking that you cite the Biblioteca Digital Lafragua and this Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs.
