This site is being constructed with the intention of providing materials for research into Nahua glyphs (also called pictographs or pictograms) and for teaching students how to read glyphs. The Aztecs, along with some other ethnic groups spoke Nahuatl, and today we refer to all these groups as Nahuas. A number of manuscripts from central Mexico, especially those made in the sixteenth century by indigenous writers and painters, are called codices (singular: codex). And some of these records provide beautiful examples of glyphs or pictographs. We begin this project by drawing from the Codex Mendoza, so named because it was commissioned by the Viceroy of New Spain, don Antonio de Mendoza (who ruled 1535–1550), and sent to the Spanish king. The Codex Mendoza is currently housed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford in the U.K. The Codex Mendoza includes the Matrícula de Tributos, which is also available through the World Digital Library from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mexico. We drew our images from an INAH open access image of the Codex Mendoza (licensed to INAH by the Bodleian in Creative Commons). In the name of Fair Use, we are using less than 10% of the Codex Mendoza in this project, which also has a non-commercial teaching and research purpose.
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If you use these images for curriculum development, and you are willing to share, please get in touch with the general editor of this site, Stephanie Wood (swood [AT] uoregon [DOT] com).