Chiyanpolco (TK207r)

Chiyanpolco (TK207r)
Compound Hieroglyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This painted compound Nahuatl hieroglyph represents the place name Chiyanpolco (perhaps “At the Miserable Chia Place”). The compound has four elements. The container of chia seeds (chiyantli) at the top and center make the key semantic contribution to the place name. Three gray puffs of curling smoke (poctli) emerge on the right and left, supplying the phonetic syllable -pol-, which is the third syllable of the place name. Below the chia is a terracotta-colored pottery jug (comitl) with a handle on each side, a narrow neck, and a flared opening. This jug provides the phonetic syllable for the locative suffix -co. Under all of these elements is a bell-shaped hill or mountain (tepetl) serving as a silent locative, as it is not part of the place name.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

Gordon Whittaker (2021, 95) discusses the -po- or -pol- phonetic syllables that derive from the noun poctli (smoke) and the verb poloa (to destroy). The phonetic syllables that come from chiyantli and poctli are seemingly more prevalent in the Tetzcoco area than they are in the central valley.

Side Note: The folio numbers are not always clear in the copy published online by the British Museum. Marc Thouvenot gives this page the number K05_A in his TLACHIA digital collection, https://tlachia.iib.unam.mx/tepetlaoztoc/K05_A.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss or Text Image: 
Gloss/Text Diplomatic Transcription: 

chiyapolco

Gloss/Text Normalization: 

Chiyanpolco

Gloss/Text Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Tepetlaoztoc, Codex (aka Kingsborough) (TK)
Date of Manuscript: 

c. 1556

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Tepetlaoztoc, East of Lake Tetzcoco

Semantic Categories: 
phonetic dimensions
place name
Syntax: 
noun(s)
syllable: co/con/com (from comitl, pot/jug)
syllable: po (from poctli, smoke)
Writing Features: 
compound of phonogram(s) & logogram(s)
Cultural Content & Iconography: 
Fire, Tobacco, Incense, Smoke
Food, Eating, Cooking
Landscape Features
Names (places)
Pottery, Earthenware
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors: 
gray
orange/terracotta
white/neutral
Shapes and Perspectives: 
frontal view
Parts (compounds or simplex + notation): 
4
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
multidirectional
Keywords: 

semillas, comida, jarra, barro, humo, cerro, cerros, montaña, montañas, nombres de lugares, topónimos, topónimo, fonetismo

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

chiyan(tli), chia, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/chiyantli
poc(tli), smoke, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/poctli
com(itl), pottery jug or pot, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/comitl
-pol, a negative augmentive, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pol
-co, locative suffix, at, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/co

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation: 

posiblemente, Lugar Miserable de Chia

Spanish Translation, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Image Source: 

The Codex Kingsborough, also known as the Códice de Tepetlaoztoc, and the Memorial de los indios de Tepetlaoztoc, is not on display. It was transferred from the British Library and is now held by the British Museum. It is shared on line at: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Am2006-Drg-13964

Image Source, Rights: 

©The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. Please also cite the <em>Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphsem>, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities Projects, 2020-present) and this URL.

Orthography: 
dropped "n"
Historical Contextualizing Image: 
See Also: 

chiyantli (Mdz16r)