Coatepec (Mdz32r)

Coatepec (Mdz32r)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This compound glyph for the place name Coatepec has two principal features. One is an upright, half-body of a snake (coatl) in profile, looking to the viewer's right. Its red, bifurcated tongue is protruding. Its body is light brown fading to yellow and then white at the belly. The bottom of the belly is white and segmented. The serpent appears to be coming out of the top of a mountain or hill (tepetl), which is typically bell-shaped and colored a two-tone green. It also has the classic red and yellow horizontal stripes 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

Added Analysis: 

There is a nearly identical version of this same place name glyph in the Codex Mendoza on folio 34 recto (see below, right). The renditions of both the snake and the mountain are standard. Coatepec was not an unusual place name. There are examples in the states of Mexico, Puebla, Veracruz, Oaxaca, and Chiapas, probably just to name a few.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

coatepec. puo

Gloss Normalization: 

Coatepec, pueblo

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: 
Animals, incl. Birds, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, etc.
Landscape Features
Names (places)
Tongue Protruding/Noticeable
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Colors: 
brown
green (dark)
green (light)
red
yellow or golden
Shapes and Perspectives: 
bell-shaped (upright)
bifurcated
curving, curvy, curved
facing right
profile view
segmented
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
downward
Keywords: 

mountains, hills, cerros, montañas, snakes, serpents, serpientes

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

coa(tl), snake/serpent, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/coatl
tepe(tl), hill or mountain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tepetl
-tepec (locative suffix), on the hill or mountain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tepec 

Karttunen’s Interpretation: 

"On the Hill of the Snake" (no apparent adjustment to the interpretation of Berdan and Anawalt here) [Frances Karttunen, unpublished manuscript, used here with her permission.]

Additional Scholars' Interpretations: 

"On the Hill of the Snake" (Berdan and Anawalt, 1992, vol. 1, p. 179)

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation: 

Cōā-tepēc = "En el monte de la serpiente" (Miguel León-Portilla)

Spanish Translation, Credit: 

Miguel León-Portilla, "Los nombres de lugar en náhuatl," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 15 (1982), 43.

Image Source: 

Codex Mendoza, folio 32 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 74 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).

See Also: 

Coatepec (Mdz34r)