monamacac (FCbk10f70r)

This iconographic example, featuring a woman who sells herself, a monamacac, is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the text on the page preceding this image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example shows a Nahua woman standing in a ¾ view, facing right, and wearing a long-sleeve European-style blouse with a ruffled neck. It is underneath her Nahua, handwoven blouse or tunic (huipilli). She also wears red shoes, showing further European influence, given their association with prostitution. The fact of her being clearly on the road, similar to a European woman “street-walker,” reveals further visual artistic influences from the clergy. In the original drawing, her hair was curly, but it was later changed to the more traditional hairstyle of married or adult Nahua women, with the hair twisted up into two points above the forehead (the neaxtlahualli or axtlacuilli). The monamacac has a tall cup with a stem in her left hand. She is offering the cup to a man who is sitting on a low seat (icpalli) in front of her. It may contain the mildly alcoholic beverage, octli, which is called pulque in Mexican Spanish today. The man offers her a coin with his left hand. This could be a peso or a tomin (eighth of a peso), it is difficult to tell, but the presence of the coin underlines the transactional nature of the procurement. The man wears European-style clothing, with a long-sleeve shirt with a high ruffled neck and a pair of trousers. All the fabrics seem to be white cotton.