maxactli (Mdz39r)
This simplex glyph for maxactli (crotch or bifurcation) doubles as the compound glyph for place name Amaxac, which has two main visual elements, a pair of open human legs referring to the crotch, maxactli) and a flow of water coming down between the legs. The water (atl), or ātl), showing vowel length] is a standard representation of flows of water painted turquoise, with black wavy lines to show some currents and white water droplets/beads and white turbinate shells at the tips of the flows or splashes. The knees are bent and the feet are bare.
Stephanie Wood
The term maxactli also has the meaning of bifurcation, and other glyphs for Amaxac (as shown in the Gran Diccionario del Náhuatl) show an upside-down Y that is purely water, with no human legs.
Stephanie Wood
amaxac.puo
Amaxac, pueblo
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
rivers, ríos, piernas, entrepierna, surcursales de ríos, bifurcaciones de ríos
a(tl), water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atl
maxac(tli), crotch, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/maxactli
maxtla(tl), loincloth, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/maxtlatl
"Una Bifurcación del Río"
Codex Mendoza, folio 39 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 88 of 188.
Original manuscript is held by the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1; used here with the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0)