Tenochtitlan (Azca20)

Tenochtitlan (Azca20)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This painted black-line drawing is the compound hieroglyph for the place name Tenochtitlan. The name starts at the bottom as a horizontal stone with the usual diagonal stripes and curling ends. It is painted red, pink, and partly left natural. Coming up vertically from the stone is a large nopalli cactus with about sixteen branches (pencas, in Spanish) plus a trunk, all painted gold but with the spines left natural. Flowers that are becoming fruits (nochtli) appear at the ends of the outermost pencas, eleven in all. These are gold fruits with a red-and-white fringe of flower petals at the top.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

We are calling this a glyph even lacking a gloss, being certain of its interpretation when based upon comparisons with other compound glyphs of this name. Normally, what are called iconographic examples in this digital collection are so labelled due to the lack of a confirming gloss. However, ideally, comparisons with glossed glyphs will help bear out the interpretations. Note the examples of Tenoch and Tenochtitlan glyphs, below.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Azcatitlan, Codex (Azca)

Date of Manuscript:

post-1550, possibly from the early seventeenth century.

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

perhaps Tlatelolco, Mexico City

Semantic Categories:

place name

Syntax:

noun(s)

Writing Features:

compound fully logographic

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Names (places)

Plants, Flora

Socio-Political Units, Cities, Towns, Neighborhoods

Stones, Rocks, Lapidary, Masonry

Cultural Content, Credit:

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors:

Shapes and Perspectives:

diagonal or angled

frontal view

spiraling, swirling, coiling, curling

striped

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

upward

Keywords:

nopales, tunas, frutas, plantas, piedras, imperio, ciudades, topónimos, nombres de lugares

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

Tenochtitlan (the capital city of the Mexica), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/Tenochtitlan

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

Tenochtitlan

Spanish Translation, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Image Source:

The Codex Azcatitlan is also known as the Histoire mexicaine, [Manuscrit] Mexicain 59–64. It is housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and hosted on line by the World Digital Library and the Library of Congress, which is “unaware of any copyright or other restrictions in the World Digital Library Collection.”
https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15280/?sp=20&st=image

Image Source, Rights:

The Library of Congress is “unaware of any copyright or other restrictions in the World Digital Library Collection.” But please cite Bibliothèque Nationale de France and this Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs.

Historical Contextualizing Image: