30 May 2025 / 10 House
Article suitable for older students
Find out moreGood resources for learning Mexica writing
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Oriol Pallarès i Carrasco: I’ve been scouring the internet for info, both in English and Spanish and no luck. I’m looking for materials to learn ancient mexica writing, but apart from the codices themselves, there doesn’t seem to be any catalogue or resource, unlike the mayan glyphs. Is it possible to earn more about how the mexica writing was composed at a practical level? In all this time has no-one tried, even for sheer interest, to compose a work in the script? I’m really disappointed even after reading the latest academic literature on mexica writing that there is no way to write in that script nowadays (again, unlike maya hyeroglyphs, which are on their way to being codified in unicode). Thanks a lot for your help in advance. (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
This is such a good question, we’re going to put it to some of the experts on our Panel. Sadly, we think we have to concur with your finding - that no-one, to our knowledge, has produced a modern reconstruction of Nahuatl/Mexica/Aztec script. That’s not to say there aren’t some very good materials out there for learning the basics of their writing system, and we’ve put together, somewhat in haste, our own selection, which you can see in our ‘Aztec Writing’ section - follow the link below...
The illustration shown here comes from Dr. Hanns Prem’s short but helpful article ‘La Escritura de los Mexicas’ in the popular Mexican archaeology magazine Arqueología Mexicana, vol. XII, no. 70 (Nov-Dec 2004) pp. 40-43.
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