pechtli (Mdz20r)
This element for flooring or a building foundation (pechtli) is comprised of both stone (tetl), on the left, and a woven reed mat (petlatl), on the right. It has been carved from the compound glyph, Tepechpan.
Stephanie Wood
The stone was a phonetic indicator for the Te- in Tepechpan, and it only plays a semantic role in the word pechtli, for foundation. The -pe- of petlatl could possibly trigger the phonetic pe- of pechtli, but the mat also has a semantic role in that mats were put on the floor for the purpose of sleeping or resting.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
cimientos, pisos, foundations, floors
pech(tli), sleeping mat, foundation, or flooring, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pechtli
petla(tl), woven mat, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/petlatl
foundation, flooring
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 20 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 50 of 188.
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).
