Mollanco (Mdz55r)

Mollanco (Mdz55r)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This compound glyph for the place name Mollanco has two prominent visual features, a frontal view of a sauce (molli) bowl (with three legs, all of it painted terracotta), and the cross-section of a black rubber (olli) ball. It involves two concentric circles, the inner one being colored black. It appears to be a cross-section of a ball that has a different type of latex, perhaps, as an exterior layer. The terracotta color can often suggest ceramics or wooden things, but the grinding bowl would also come to be made from stone. The ball has a white ring around it. The locative suffix (-co) is not shown visually.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

The sauce bowl is normally a molcaxitl (which came to be molcajete in Mexican Spanish), but the simpler "mol," from molli, suffices. The "mol" sound is reinforced by the "ol" of olli (rubber). The gloss does not provide a double l for the middle of the place name, but usually mol + tlan would involve dropping the t, resulting in mollan. Notice how this glyph for Mollanco compares to the other two from the Codex Mendoza (below). Multiple artists probably worked on these glyphs.

There are two towns with the Hispanized place name, Molango, located in the modern states of Hidalgo and Veracruz.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

molanco, puo

Gloss Normalization: 

Mollanco, 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
phonetic dimensions
Syntax: 
locative (not visual)
noun(s)
Cultural Content & Iconography: 
Food, Eating, Cooking
Names (places)
Rubber
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Colors: 
black
orange/terracotta
white/neutral
Shapes and Perspectives: 
circle, circular or rounded
circle(s) (small, often concentric)
cross-sectioned object
frontal view
tripartite
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
upward
Reading Order, Notes: 

The reading starts at the bottom, but what is above is not read aloud. Rather, it is a reinforcement of the phonetics of the lower part.

Keywords: 

sauces, sauce bowls, rubber balls, moles, molcajetes, pelotas, hule

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 

mol(li), sauce, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/molli
molcaxi(tl), sauce bowl, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/molcaxitl
ol(li), rubber, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/olli
-tlan (locative suffix), by, near, among, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlan
-co (locative suffix), in or at, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/co

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation: 

"El Lugar del Mole" o "El Lugar del Molcajete" (?)

Spanish Translation, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Image Source: 

Codex Mendoza, folio 55 recto, https://codicemendoza.inah.gob.mx/inicio.php?lang=english

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).

See Also: 

olli (Mdz13r)

olli (Mdz16r)

olli (Mdz55r)

Mollanco (Mdz13r)

Mollanco (Mdz16r)