Tenantzinco (Mdz10v)

Tenantzinco (Mdz10v)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This compound glyph for the place name Tenantzinco shows two principal visual components, a stepped/crenelated rampart painted turquoise blue [tenantli and the lower half of a male body, sitting upright, facing to the viewer's left, intending tzintli, buttocks, bottom, rear end, but standing phonetically for the locative suffix -tzinco, meaning little, lower, or lesser prior to a place name. The body is painted a terracotta color, but the toenails and the loincloth waist band are white. The rampart has not only the rectangular and stepped crenelation, but four small concentric circles run horizontally along the wall below the crenelation. The -co locative suffix is not visible on its own.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

tenançinco.puo

Gloss Normalization: 

Tenantzinco, pueblo

Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Date of Manuscript: 

c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Mexico City

Semantic Categories: 
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation): 
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
Keywords: 

walls, ramparts, paredes, almenas, cresterías, buttocks, nalgas rear end, buttocks, bottom

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

tenan(tli), wall, fortification, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tenantli
tenam(itl), wall, fortification, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tenamitl
tzin(tli), buttocks, bottom, rear end, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tzintli
-tzinco (locative suffix), at the lesser, little, lower, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/tzinco
-co
(locative suffix, at, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/co

Additional Scholars' Interpretations: 

"At Lesser Tenanco [At the Walls]" (Gordon Whittaker, Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs, 2021, 104)

Whittaker's Transliteration: 

TENAN-TZINCO

Image Source: 

Codex Mendoza, folio 10 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 31 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).