Illustration of the founding of Tenochtitlán,
from the Codex Mendoza

Manuscript compiled c. 1541

When the Aztecs arrived in the Valley of Mexico around 1325, they adopted the writing systems of the people already living there. Like their neighbors, the Aztecs created large folding books called codices (singular: codex) and painted their text on long pages made from bark leaf paper or deer-skin. Their system of writing relied heavily on the use of pictures to convey meaning and it included some glyphs (symbolic figures) as well. The Aztecs glyphs represented words, but they were usually used only for people or place names or calendar dates. Unlike Maya glyph-writing, the Aztec system did not include glyphs for individual syllables or the separate sounds that make up words. Therefore it could not fully reproduce the spoken language of the Aztecs.