Tepechiapan (Mdz13r)
This compound glyph for the place name Tepechiapan features three prominent elements, a hill or mountain (tepetl), three chia seeds (chia(n)), and a band of water (atl) encircling the mountain. The tepetl is the standard two-tone green bell shape, plus it has horizontal red and yellow lines at the base. The chia seeds are rather large black circles on the mountain. The band of water going around the middle of the mountain is the standard turquoise color, with black lines showing a current, and white turbinate shells and white water droplets/beads coming off the water. The -pan locative suffix ("on") is not shown visuallyThis compound glyph for the place name Tecozauhtlan has as its focus a stone, tetl), that has turned yellow (cozahui). Surrounding the yellow stone are perhaps some smaller stones, sand, and dirt, also yellow, which doubles as the word for yellow ochre (tecozahuitl). The locative -tlan is only implied, not shown visually, but the local landscape shown in the compound may serve as a semantic locative.
Stephanie Wood
The tepetl and chian are the key features. The water may be there to add an "a" sound and help with the reading of chian, which has an "a." Otherwise, one might confuse the three dots for the number three (yei or eyi)
Stephanie Wood
tepechiapā. puo
Tepechiapan, pueblo
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
mountains, hills, cerros, montañas, chia, seeds, semillas, agua
tepe(tl), hill or mountain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tepetl
chia(n), chia seeds, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/chian
a(tl), water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atl
-apan (locative suffix), on or at the waters of, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/apan-0
yei, three, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/yei
On Chia Mountain
Codex Mendoza, folio 13 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 36 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).