Oztonacazco (TK206v)

Oztonacazco (TK206v)
Compound Hieroglyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This painted compound Nahuatl hieroglyph stands for the place name Oztonacazco (perhaps “At the Side of the Cave”). The compound is read upward and has three elements. The first element is a round cave (oztotl) resembling a monster with an open mouth, a face with two eyes and eyebrows in a frontal view, and curly rocky outcroppings all around the outer perimeter. It is painted pink. This cave clarifies the start to the place name, Ozto-. Above the earth monster head is, on the left, a human ear, representing the middle part of the place name, -nacaz-, which can mean “side” or “corner.” To the right of the ear is a pottery jug or pot (comitl), which serves here as a phonetic syllable for the locative suffix, -co.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

Many adverbs that convey location, direction, and spatial relationships come from parts of the human body. The shoulder (acolli), for instance, can refer to a bend in a river or a cove in a lake. The lips (tentli) can suggest an edge or border. As here, the ear (nacaztli) can mean side or corner. The nose (yacatl) can refer to being in the lead. Hands (maitl) lend themselves to measurements for land.
Side Note: The folio numbers are not always clear in the copy published online by the British Museum. Marc Thouvenot gives this page the number K04_B in his TLACHIA digital collection, https://tlachia.iib.unam.mx/tepetlaoztoc/K04_B.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss or Text Image:

Gloss/Text Diplomatic Transcription:

oztonacazco

Gloss/Text Normalization:

Oztonacazco

Gloss/Text Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Tepetlaoztoc, Codex (aka Kingsborough) (TK)

Date of Manuscript:

c. 1556

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

Tepetlaoztoc, East of Lake Tetzcoco

Semantic Categories:

phonetic dimensions

place name

Syntax:

noun(s)

syllable: co/con/com (from comitl, pot/jug)

Writing Features:

simplex or element as logogram

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Anatomy, human body parts

Landscape Features

Names (places)

Pottery, Earthenware

Cultural Content, Credit:

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors:

brown

pink

Shapes and Perspectives:

frontal view

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

upward

left to right

Keywords:

oreja, barro, jarra, olla, cuevas, nombres de lugares, topónimo, topónimos, fonetismo

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

nacaz(tli), ear, corner, or side, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nacaztli
ozto(tl), cave, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/oztotl
-co, locative suffix, at, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/co

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

Al Lado de la Cueva

Spanish Translation, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Image Source:

The Codex Kingsborough, also known as the Códice de Tepetlaoztoc, and the Memorial de los indios de Tepetlaoztoc, is not on display. It was transferred from the British Library and is now held by the British Museum. It is shared on line at: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Am2006-Drg-13964

Image Source, Rights:

©The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. Please also cite the <em>Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphsem>, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities Projects, 2020-present) and this URL.

Historical Contextualizing Image: