Coatzinco (Mdz42r)
This compound glyph for the place name Coatzinco has two principal features. One is a snake/serpent (coatl), and the other is the lower part of a human body, rear end, and buttocks [tzintli, which provides the phonetic value for the locative suffix (-tzinco). The snake is curving and shown in profile, looking to the viewer's right. It is painted a light brown turning to yellow toward the belly. The belly itself is white and segmented. The snake has a rattler on the end, painted the same brown as most of its body. The snake's tongue is painted red, is protruding, and is bifurcated. It looks much like a flame. The tzintli is from the body of a man, obvious from the white belt of the loincloth. It is painted a terracotta flesh tone. The body is upright, and the knees are bent upward, typical of the posture of a seated male.
Stephanie Wood
Stephanie Wood
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
snakes, serpents, serpientes, rump, bottom, nalgas, cohuatl
coa(tl), snake/serpent, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/coatl
-tzinco (locative suffix), at the little, lower, or new (place), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tzinco
"New Coatlan" [Frances Karttunen, unpublished manuscript, used here with her permission.]
"On the Small Snake" (Berdan and Anawalt, 1992, vol. 1, p. 179)
Codex Mendoza, folio 42 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 94 of 188.
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).