Malinaltepec (Mxnus26)

Malinaltepec (Mxnus26)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This compound glyph for the place name Malinaltepec features twisted grass (malinalli) on top of a hill or mountain (tepetl). The grass is twisted into almost a figure 8 with the two ends open and loose at the tops. The grass looks something like rope. The hill is short and squat. It is colored green, and the horizontal stripe at the base is yellow. The locative suffix (-c) is not shown visually, although the hill can serve as a semantic indicator of the locative.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

While this grass may grow in this vicinity, malinalli is also a day sign of the calendar.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Mexicanus, Codex (Mxnus)

Date of Manuscript:

ca. 1590

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

central Mexico

Semantic Categories:

calendrics

day name

place name

Syntax:

locative (not visual, but represented semantically)

noun(s)

Writing Features:

compound fully logographic

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Time, Calendar, Frequency

Cultural Content, Credit:

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors:

Shapes and Perspectives:

frontal view

tied, bound, or bundled

twisted or entwined

Parts (of compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

downward

Keywords:

grasses, hierbas, torcidas, twisted, calendarios

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

malinalli, tall grass, twisted grass, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/malinalli
-tepec, on the hill or mountain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tepec

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

En el Cerro de la Hierba Torcida

Spanish Translation, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Image Source:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15284/?sp=26&st=image. This image is hosted by the Library of Congress and the World Digital Library, but the manuscript is part of the holdings of Bibliothèque nationale de France and the original source is gallica.bnf.fr/BNF.

Image Source, Rights:

The non-commercial reuse of images from the Bibliothèque nationale de France is free as long as the user is in compliance with the legislation in force and provides the citation: “Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France” or “Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF.”

Historical Contextualizing Image: