atl (Mdz10r)
This element for the water [here, atl) has been carved from the compound place name Capoloac. For all intents and purposes it looks like the typical cross-section of a canal or waterway (apantli), which typically has a trapezoidal shape and a lining of a contrasting color, such as yellow, red, or green with yellow hash marks (or some combination of these. The water in the container is the usual turquoise blue with wavy lines running horizontally through the water (including one especially thick black line in the middle) and white droplets/beads and white turbinate shells splashing off the top.
Stephanie Wood
The noun atl can be represented by an apantli sign and vice versa. These two signs are not hard and fast, even if they to have certain tendencies.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
a(tl), water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atl
Codex Mendoza, folio 10 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 30 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).