Cuicatlan (Mdz43r)

Cuicatlan (Mdz43r)
Simplex Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This simplex glyph for the place name Cuicatlan can have multiple readings, including the noun cuicani (singer), the noun cuicatl (song), and the verb cuica. It consists of a human face in profile, looking to our right. From the open mouth emerges a huge speech scroll with an elaborate design. The scroll is segmented, red and white, with black line drawings. The locative suffix -tlan is not shown visually. The signs inside the song scroll include (from the bottom up), two opposing volutes, something that looks like a flower, and a turbinate shell, among other signs that are less easily recognized.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

The opposing volutes are reminiscent of those shown on folio 70 recto, where a "pintor" writes on a codex. And the first two signs at the bottom of the song scroll appear again in an image, this time of a woman with her writing implement, in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. Mexicolore publishes this image. It is also the same pairing of signs that circles a cuauhxicalli stone four times. This is found in the Museo de Escultura Mexica in Santa Cecilia Acatitlan, in the area of Tlalnepantla, CDMX.

The outside of the scroll of this glyph for Cuicatlan has small, white, curling shapes that could be feathers. The elaborate decorations on this speech scroll may take speaking to a new height to represent singing.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image:

Gloss Diplomatic Transcription:

cuicatlan. pu^o

Gloss Normalization:

Cuicatlan, 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 (not visual)

noun(s)

verb

visible sound

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Colors:

Shapes and Perspectives:

spiraling, swirling, coiling, curling

volute(s)

Keywords:

songs, singing, singer, canciones, cantar, cantor

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

cuica, to sing, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cuica
cuica(tl), song, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cuicatl
cuica(ni), singer, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cuicani
-tlan (locative suffix), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlan

Image Source:

Codex Mendoza, folio 43 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 96 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).