Cuauhnahuac (Mdz23r)

Cuauhnahuac (Mdz23r)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This compound glyph for the place name Cuauhnahuac (Cuernavaca, today) shows a vertical tree (cuahuitl) with a leader and two branches, each with green foliage. The trunk is a terracotta color, and the visible roots are red. The trunk has an open, toothless mouth and a turquoise-colored speech (nahuatl) scroll emerges from it, as though the tree is speaking to someone to the viewer's right.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

The visual for speech has nothing to do with speaking but, rather, provides the phonetic element for -nahuac, a locative suffix meaning near.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

quauhnahuac. puo

Gloss Normalization: 

Cuauhnahuac, pueblo

Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Date of Manuscript: 

c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Mexico City

Semantic Categories: 
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

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

trees, roots, speech, árboles, raíces, palabras, volutas

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Additional Scholars' Interpretations: 

"Near the Trees" (Whittaker, Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs, 2021, 103); "Beside the Trees" (Berdan and Anawalt, 1992, vol. 1, 201)

Whittaker's Transliteration: 

CUAUH•nahua or CUAUH•NAHUAC

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation: 

"Cerca de los Árboles"

Spanish Translation, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Image Source: 

Codex Mendoza, folio 23 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 56 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).