Tenochtitlan (TK216r)

Tenochtitlan (TK216r)
Compound Hieroglyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This painted compound Nahuatl hieroglyph represents the capital city of Tenochtitlan. It has two parts, a stone (tetl) and a cactus bearing fruit (nochtli). The cactus itself is called a nopalli, but this term does not come into play in the name. The stone is gray with a vertical wavy white stripe across the middle and curling bits on both ends. Sitting on the stone is the multicolored cactus, and it is bearing four fruits.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

See other hieroglyphs for Tenochtitlan (also called Mexico) below. The personal name Tenoch also appears in very similar glyphs.

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 K15_A in his TLACHIA digital collection, https://tlachia.iib.unam.mx/tepetlaoztoc/K15_A.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss or Text Image:

Gloss/Text Diplomatic Transcription:

mexico (given in the Spanish text)

Gloss/Text Normalization:

Mexico

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:

place name

Syntax:

noun(s)

Writing Features:

compound fully logographic

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Colonialism (Spanish)

Names (places)

Plants, Flora

Stones, Rocks, Lapidary, Masonry

Cultural Content, Credit:

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors:

Shapes and Perspectives:

frontal view

striped

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

upward

Keywords:

capital, ciudad, nopales, tuna, tunas, piedra, piedras, nombres de lugares, topónimo, topónimos

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

noch(tli), prickly pear cactus fruit, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nochtli
te(tl), stone, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tetl
Tenochtitlan, On the Cactus of the Stone, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tenochtitlan

Additional Scholars' Interpretations:

"By the Rock Cactus" [Gordon Whittaker, Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs, 2021, 111]. "Place of the Cactus Fruit on the Stone" [Jongsoo Lee, The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl, 2008, 258.]

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

Tenochtitlan

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: