Chimalpopoca (TR30v)

Chimalpopoca (TR30v)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This compound glyph for the personal name Chimalpopoca includes the frontal view of a shield (chimalli) that is smoking (popoca). The smoke (poctli) scrolls are multicolored, dark gray on the outside and a pink, red, or orange inside. In this case, too, the smoke curls have a small rectangle of this same warm color at the base. The shield has a pink background with five white down feathers in a quincunx pattern. It also has fringe coming off what is the left side to the viewer. Behind the shield is what may be a white banner and a group of yellow, red, and gray arrows that do not enter into the name phonetically.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

Another version of the compound for the name Chimalpopoca, which comes instead from the Codex Mendoza (below), does not inlude the arrows, and the color scheme is considerably different. The combination of arrows and shield, in other contexts, can represent the diphrasism, in mitl, in chimalli (i.e., war). Katarzyna Mikulska (2020, 52-54) discusses the possibility for diphrasisms and metonymic series (after Dehouve) to be "represented graphically." The arrows and shield are one example that she shares. See also Mercedes Montes de Oca Vega's discussion of couplets in Mexicolore.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

rrodela humosa

Gloss Normalization: 

rodela humosa

Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Date of Manuscript: 

ca. 1550–1563

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Mexico City

Semantic Categories: 
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Shapes and Perspectives: 
Parts (compounds or simplex + notation): 
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
Keywords: 

smoke, humo, shields, rodelas, flechas, plumas, volutas, difrasismo, couplets

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

Chimalpopoca, a ruler of Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the fifteenth century, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/chimalpopoca
chimal(li), war shield, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/chimalli
popoca, to smoke (verb), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/popoca

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation: 

La Rodela Humosa

Image Source: 

Telleriano-Remensis Codex, folio 30 recto, MS Mexicain 385, Gallica digital collection, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8458267s/f86.item.zoom

Image Source, Rights: 

The non-commercial reuse of images from the Bibliothèque nationale de France is free as long as the user is in compliance with the legislation in force and provides the citation: “Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France” or “Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF.”

Historical Contextualizing Image: