Tepeyacac (Mdz42r)

Tepeyacac (Mdz42r)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This compound glyph stands for the place name Tepeyacac (Tepeyac, today). It consists of a hill or mountain (tepetl) with a nose on the right side. The rocky outcropping has been moved lower on that side of the hill to accommodate the placement of the nose (yacatl) at the center of the slope and in a profile view, facing to the viewer's right. The mountain is the usual two-tone green with the horizontal red and yellow stripes at its base. The nose is colored terracotta.

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).

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood, drawing from the work of Gordon Whittaker

Gloss Image:

Gloss Diplomatic Transcription:

tepeacac. pu^o

Gloss Normalization:

Tepeyacac, pueblo

Gloss Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Mendoza/Mendocino, Codex (Mdz)

Date of Manuscript:

c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

Mexico City

Semantic Categories:

place name

Syntax:

locative (visual not silent)

noun(s)

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Anatomy, human body parts

Landscape Features

Names (places)

Socio-Political Units, Cities, Towns, Neighborhoods

Cultural Content, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Colors:

Shapes and Perspectives:

bell-shaped (upright)

facing right

profile view

pointed (see also spiky)

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

left to right

Keywords:

mountains, hills, peaks, picos, cerros, montañas

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]

Whittaker's Transliteration:

TEPE•YACA.

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

En el Pico de la Montaña

Spanish Translation, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Image Source:

Codex Mendoza, folio 42 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 94 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).