Atepec (Mdz16v)

Atepec (Mdz16v)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This compound glyph for the place name Atepec includes two principal elements. One is a hill or mountain (tepetl), and the other is the turquoise blue water (a(tl)] that spills down over the top, throwing off its droplets/beads and turbinate shells. The mountain has the usual two-tone green bell shape with the horizontal red and yellow stripes at the bottom. The locative suffix (-c) is not shown visually, but it combines with -tepe- to form -tepec, a visual locative suffix meaning "on the hill" or "on the mountain."

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

The water and the mountain are among the most recurring landscape features in place name glyphs. The two combined make up the word altepetl, which was the term that referred to a proper socio-political unit (such as a city-state). In this place name, however, we do not have "al" at the beginning, but simply "a." And the locative suffix (-c) is not shown independently but fused with the -tepe-.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

atepec. puo

Gloss Normalization: 

Atepec, pueblo

Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Mendoza/Mendocino, Codex (Mdz)
Date of Manuscript: 

c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Mexico City

Semantic Categories: 
place name
Syntax: 
locative (visual not silent)
noun(s)
Cultural Content & Iconography: 
Landscape Features
Names (places)
Shells
Water
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Colors: 
blue (turquoise)
green (dark)
green (light)
red
yellow or golden
Shapes and Perspectives: 
bell-shaped (upright)
circle(s) (small, often concentric)
curving, curvy, curved
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
downward
Keywords: 

water, hills, mountains, shells, agua, cerros, montañas, caracoles

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 

a(tl), water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atl
tepe(tl), hill or mountain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tepetl
-tepec, on the hill or mountain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tepec 

Karttunen’s Interpretation: 

"On the Hill of Water" (having no disagreement with the Berdan and Anawalt interpretation) [Frances Karttunen, unpublished manuscript, used here with her permission.]

Additional Scholars' Interpretations: 

"On the Hill of Water" (Berdan and Anawalt, 1992, vol. 1, p. 172)

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation: 

"En el Cerro del Agua"

Spanish Translation, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Image Source: 

Codex Mendoza, folio 16 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 43 of 188.

Image Source, Rights: 

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).

See Also: 

tepetl (Mdz32r)

atl (Mdz16v)