Chapoltepec (Osu1v)

Chapoltepec (Osu1v)
Compound Hieroglyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This multicolored compound glyph for the place name Chapoltepec ("Grasshopper Hill") comes from folio 1 verso of the Codex Osuna (image 5). It shows the classical bell-shaped sign for hill or mountain (tepetl). The hill is green. It has a red horizontal line--surrounded by white--near its base. This is the site where a natural spring could emerge. On top of the hill is a grasshopper (chapolin) in profile, facing toward the viewer's right. Its legs are bent and its wings are raised slightly. It has two horizontal, straight antennae coming off its head.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

For other renditions of grasshoppers, see below. Chapulines (as the Nahuatl term entered Spanish) are still an item in the Mexican diet today.

For another version of the Chapoltepec glyph, see Marc Thouvenot's vignette, which is based on the Códice Durán.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss or Text Image:

Gloss/Text Diplomatic Transcription:

[C]hapultepec

Gloss/Text Normalization:

Chapoltepec (Chapultepec today)

Gloss/Text Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Osuna, Codex (Osu)

Date of Manuscript:

1551–1565

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

Mexico City

Semantic Categories:

place name

Writing Features:

compound fully logographic

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Animals: Insects/Bugs

Food, Eating, Cooking

Landscape Features

Names (places)

Socio-Political Units, Cities, Towns, Neighborhoods

Cultural Content, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Colors:

green (dark)

red

white/neutral

Shapes and Perspectives:

bell-shaped (upright)

facing right

profile view

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

downward

Keywords:

hills, mountains, grasshoppers, cerros, montañas, chapulines, chapulín, insecto, insectos, nombres de lugares, topónimos, place names

Museum/Rare Book/Realia Comparisons:

Museum/Rare Book/Realia Notes:

This detail in neon is part of a larger installation, “Cuenca del Anahuac” (2015), by César Moheno and Alejandro Salafranca at the Museo de la Ciudad de México. The artists incorporate what they call “pictografías” and other symbols from deep in Mexican history up to contemporary times. This one is the hieroglyph for the place name Chapultepec (or Chapoltepec) that they apparently adapted from a codex. Photograph by Stephanie Wood, 6 February 2026.

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Image Source:

Library of Congress Online Catalog and the World Digital Library, Osuna Codex, or Painting of the Governor, Mayors, and Rulers of Mexico, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_07324/, image 5. The original is located in the Biblioteca Nacional de España.

Image Source, Rights:

"The Library of Congress is unaware of any copyright or other restrictions in the World Digital Library Collection. Absent any such restrictions, these materials are free to use and reuse." But please cite the Biblioteca Nacional de España and this Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs if you use any of these images here or refer to the content on this page, providing the URL.

Orthography:

"u" for o

Historical Contextualizing Image: