Nextlalpan (Osu36r)

Nextlalpan (Osu36r)
Compound Hieroglyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This painted compound Nahuatl hieroglyph represents the place name Nextlalpan ("On Ashen Lands"). It shows a horizontal, rectangular, brown piece of land that has a pattern seemingly suggestive of agricultural activity (sideways letters, "U"). Two white shapes sit on top of this parcel of land. These shapes may represent ash (nextli) material, given the gloss of the place name. Below this is green, bell-shaped hill or mountain (tepetl) with the red and yellow horizontal slits at the base, which is the site where a natural spring (atl) might emerge. This may be a relevant landscape feature of Nextlalpan, or simply a visual locative. Another possibility is that it intends to identify Nextlalpan as an altepetl (socio-political unit or ethnic state).

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

On another page of this manuscript and in the Codex Mendoza, ashes typically appear as black dots on a gray background. That is not what we have here. The white shapes that might represent nextli on this glyph are indeterminate. Ash can be a good thing for agricultural land, as swidden agriculture demonstrates, but it really depends what pH the soil has at the start.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss or Text Image:

Gloss/Text Diplomatic Transcription:

nestlalpan

Gloss/Text Normalization:

Nextlalpan

Gloss/Text Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Osuna, Codex (Osu)

Date of Manuscript:

1551–1565

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

Mexico City

Semantic Categories:

place name

Syntax:

noun(s)

Writing Features:

compound fully logographic

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Agriculture, Gardens, Stock Raising

Fire, Tobacco, Incense, Smoke

Landscape Features

Names (places)

Cultural Content, Credit:

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors:

Shapes and Perspectives:

bell-shaped (upright)

frontal view

rectangular

U-shapes (any direction)

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

downward

Keywords:

ceniza, cenizas, tierra, tierras, parcela, parcelas, agricultura

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

nex(tli), ashes, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nextli
tlal(li), land, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlalli
-pan (locative suffix), in or on, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pan

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

posiblemente, "En las Tierras Cenicientas"

Spanish Translation, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Image Source:

Library of Congress Online Catalog and the World Digital Library, Osuna Codex, or Painting of the Governor, Mayors, and Rulers of Mexico, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_07324/. The original is located in the Biblioteca Nacional de España.

Image Source, Rights:

"The Library of Congress is unaware of any copyright or other restrictions in the World Digital Library Collection. Absent any such restrictions, these materials are free to use and reuse." But please cite the Biblioteca Nacional de España and this Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs if you use any of these images here or refer to the content on this page, providing the URL

Orthography:

"s" for x

Historical Contextualizing Image: