Iztactlalocan (Mdz13v)

Iztactlalocan (Mdz13v)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This compound glyph for the place name Iztactlalocan includes two visual elements, a hill or mountain (tepetl, visual but silent, serving as what Whittaker calls a "semantic complement") that is white (iztac), and above the hill, the head of the figure of Tlaloc, the rain deity.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

Gordon Whittaker (2021, 207) notes that this town could have two names, depending upon whether the final "l" should be double or single. "Where the White Tlaloc Is" could be one reading, and the other is "Where There is a Lot of Land."

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image:

Gloss Diplomatic Transcription:

yztactlalocan. pu^o

Gloss Normalization:

Iztac Tlalocan, 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 but silent)

noun(s)

phrase or sentence

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Landscape Features

Names (places)

Religion (Indigenous)

Weather, Climate

Cultural Content, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

downward

upward

multidirectional

Reading Order, Notes:

The reading starts with the white (at the bottom) and goes up to the figure of Tlaloc, but then it could be seen as going down again, if the tepetl is accepted as the rough equivalent of the locative (-can).

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

iztac, white, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/iztac
Tlaloc, rain deity or priest associated with rain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/Tlaloc
-can (locative suffix), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/can-2

Image Source:

Codex Mendoza, folio 13 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 37 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).