iztatl (Mdz13v)
This element has been carved from the compound glyph for the place name, Iztatlan. The main feature is a ball of salt. It is white salt, and the ball has a ridge around it. The center has speckles (grains) that are visible.
Stephanie Wood
The speckles in the salt are reminiscent of those in the glyphs for sand, as seen here: Book of Tributes. The word for salt (iztatl) lent itself to the word for white (iztac), but representations of iztac do not have speckles: https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/content/iztac. Of course, in some places in the world, salt can be other colors. Balls of salt were tribute items, described for instance in the Book of Tributes published by S. L. Cline (1993), pp. 140–141. The Kingsborough Codex shows a salt glyph with notations amounting to 200; so, 200 balls of salt were to be delivered by a given community as tribute items, along with 80,000 chiles, 800 bundles of beans, and more.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
salt balls, salt cakes, white
salt or ball of salt
la sal, la bola de sal
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 13 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 37 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).
