Acatl Icpac (Mdz23r)
This compound glyph for the place name Acatl Icpac has two components, one is a reed/arrow (acatl) and the other is a hill or mountain (tepetl). The arrow is made from the cane (yellow) of a reed plant, but on either side of it are reed foliage (turquoise blue). The arrow is decorated with a brown eagle feather and a small white down ball, which are typical features of the reed arrow or dart and the calendrical symbol for acatl. The hill has the usual bell shape and the two-tone green coloring, plus the red and yellow horizontal stripes at the base. There is no locative suffix, as the "Icpac" (an adverb) in the place name says where (above) the reed is located.
Stephanie Wood
Berdan and Anawalt recognize both the arrow and the reed in their translation. The reed foliage may be there to ensure that the phonetic reading is acatl) and not mitl) (arrow).
Stephanie Wood
acatl icpac. puo
Acatl Icpac (or Acatlicpac), pueblo
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
reeds, rushes, canes, hills, arrows, darts, feathers, acatl, icpac, tepetl, tules, carrizos, plants
![](https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Acatlicpac23r.jpeg?itok=lSAbtCg0)
aca(tl), reed or reed-arrow/dart, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/acatl
-icpac, on top or above, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/icpac
"On Top of the (Arrow) Reeds" (Karttunen apparently agrees with Berdan & Anawalt's translation) [Frances Karttunen, unpublished manuscript, used here with her permission.]
"On Top of the (Arrow) Reeds" (Berdan and Anawalt, 1992, vol. 1, p. 168)
"Encima de las Cañas (Usadas Para Flechas)"
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 23 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 56 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).