Tepeyacac (Mdz10v)

Tepeyacac (Mdz10v)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This compound glyph for the place name Tepeyacac (today, Tepeyac) has two principal visual components, a two-tone green, bell-shaped mountain or hill (tepetl) and, on the left side, a terracotta-colored nose (yacatl). The nose protrudes just below the rocky outcropping on the left slope.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

The nose is not there for any semantic meaning relating to human anatomy. Rather, the nose was meant to bring up "point," in particular the mountain peak. The "yaca" from yacatl has been given a locative final -c, creating the postposition -yacac (locative, telling where). In this particular place, the peak was the site of a worship of a female divnity, Tonantzin ("Our Revered Mother"), and became important after contact as the eventual site of a basilica devoted to the Virgin Mary, the "Virgin of Guadalupe."

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood, drawing from the work of Gordon Whittaker

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Mendoza/Mendocino, Codex (Mdz)
Date of Manuscript: 

c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Mexico City

Semantic Categories: 
place name
Syntax: 
noun(s)
Cultural Content & Iconography: 
Anatomy, human body parts
Landscape Features
Names (places)
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Colors: 
blue (turquoise)
green (dark)
green (light)
orange/terracotta
yellow or golden
Shapes and Perspectives: 
bell-shaped (upright)
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
right to left
Keywords: 

mountains, hills, peaks, picos, montañas, cerros, noses, narices, nariz

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

tepe(tl), hill or mountain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tepetl
yacat(l), nose, point, peak, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/yacatl
-yacac (locative suffix), on the rim of, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/yacac

Additional Scholars' Interpretations: 

"At the Point of the Mountain" [Gordon Whittaker, Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs, 2021, 106]

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).