panitl (Mdz20r)

panitl (Mdz20r)
Element from a Compound

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This element for panitl or pamitl (flag, banner) has been carved from the compound sign for the place name, Acapan. The flag here consists of a vertical white pole (on the left) with a white banner standing out to our right. The banner is twice as tall as it is wide.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

In the context from which it was taken, the flag was serving to provide the phonetic value for the locative suffix -pan, so the absolutive must be conjecture. We are watching for the use of pantli, tecpantli, panitl, and pamitl. It is a challenge to differentiate between them, for they look very much alike most of the time. For now, when the banner has an association with a number, we are using pantli or tecpantli, watching how they are glossed, and when it is a phonetic locative for a place name, we are often using panitl. Apparently panitl was more common in "Mexico, the Tepanec heartland, and perhaps Colhuacan and Chalco," and pamitl in "northern and eastern flanks of the Valley of Mexico" [see: Jorge Klor de Alva, in The Work of Bernardino de Sahagún: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-century Aztec Mexico (Albany, NY: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, the University at Albany, State University of New York, 1988), 323]. As glyphs come in to this collection from regions where pamitl is more common, we will abide by that orthography.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Date of Manuscript: 

c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Mexico City

Syntax: 
Cultural Content & Iconography: 
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Colors: 
Shapes and Perspectives: 
Keywords: 

flags, banners, pantli, pamitl

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 
Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation: 

la bandera

Spanish Translation, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Image Source: 

Codex Mendoza, folio 20 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 50 of 188.

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).