apantli (Mdz43r)
This element of a water channel or canal (apantli) has been carved from the compound sign for the place name, Tamazolapan. It is a trapezoid with a red and yellow lining (more suggestive of construction than a natural shape) and turquoise blue water. The water has horizontal but wavy black lines of different thicknesses (suggestive of movement), and splashing off the top of the water are a shell and a water droplet (or perhaps a round jade stone). These are white, and they are emblematic in the iconography of water. We have digitally removed the tamazolin from the water, and therefore we had to reconstruct the water in place of the animal. See below, right, for the original compound hieroglyph.
Stephanie Wood
This element serves as a visual locative suffix for the place name, providing the reading "on the water"--apan, which is the stem for apantli. The lining of the canal can vary in the colors and number of layers, as shown in other examples, below.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
water, shells, canals, channels, canales, agua, construcción
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
water channel
el canal, o en la orilla del agua
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 43 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 96 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).
