apantli (Mdz39r)
This element for apantli (water channel or canal) has been carved from the compound glyph for Acuitlapan. It is a trapezoidal shaped, cross-section of a canal, showing the turquoise-colored water and black wavy lines indicating water currents (movement). This canal has red and yellow lining, with an outer layer of green with yellow hash marks.
Stephanie Wood
It is important to point out that most or all examples of the element apantli in this database are not really meant to provide a semantic reading of waterway, water ditch, or canal, but rather, the postposition -apan, a phonetic locative suffix meaning "on (or at) the waters of." It is also worth noting that the lining of the canal can vary in color and thickness, as can be seen in some examples, below. But this example is the most elaborate we have seen so far (with over 4,000 total records in the database).
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
water channels, canals, waterway, agricultural ditch, shells, conchas, agua, canales
apan(tli), water channel or canal, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/apantli
pan(tli), furrow, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pantli
-apan (locative suffix), on the water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/apan-0
a(tl), water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atl
-pan (locative suffix), on, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pan
"waterway" (apantli), and "on (or at) the waters of" (-apan, the phonetic post-position" [Gordon Whittaker, Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs, 2021, 104]
APAN(TLI), or apan
el canal (apantli) o junto a las aguas de (-apan)
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 39 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 88 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).
