Caltepec (Mdz16r)

Caltepec (Mdz16r)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This compound glyph for the place name Caltepec includes two prominent features, a house or building (calli) and a hill or mountain (tepetl). The house is white with a t-shaped terracotta beam complex shown in profile, with the building facing to the viewer's left. The hill is a standard bell shape, painted a two-tone green with a yellow and a red horizontal stripe at its base. 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

Gloss Image: 
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: 
Architecture, Construction, Buildings
Landscape Features
Names (places)
Socio-Political Units, Cities, Towns, Neighborhoods
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Colors: 
green (dark)
green (light)
orange/terracotta
red
white/neutral
yellow or golden
Shapes and Perspectives: 
facing left
profile view
right angle(s)
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
downward
Keywords: 

mountains, hills, houses, buildings, cerros, montañas, edificios, casas

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

cal(li), house or building, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/calli
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"On the House on the Hill" (concurring with the Berdan and Anawalt interpretation) [Frances Karttunen, unpublished manuscript, used here with her permission.]

Additional Scholars' Interpretations: 

"On the House on the Hill" (Berdan and Anawalt, 1992, vol. 1, p. 175)

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation: 

"En la Casa en el Cerro"

Spanish Translation, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Image Source: 

Codex Mendoza, folio 16 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 42 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).