Tepolohuatl (TK207v)

Tepolohuatl (TK207v)
Compound Hieroglyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This painted compound Nahuatl hieroglyph represents the personal name Tepoloa (“He Destroys People”), a local leader. Gordon Whittaker (2021, 95) translates the name. The compound has four elements. The reading order is generally downward. It starts with the phonetic syllable Te- from lips (tentli) in profile facing left. In front of the partial face that includes the lips are four gray smoke (poctli) curls. The smoke supplies the -po- phonetic syllable for the start of the verb in the middle of the name. Below the smoke and lips is a horizontal stalk of maize (ohuatl), somewhat reddish with white leaves. This provides the disyllabogram, -ohua-, which is a phonetic contribution for the last part of the verb poloa. Finally, at the lower end of the compound is the noun tzintli (rear end or buttocks of a man) that serves to supply the phonetic syllable -tzin for the reverential suffix (a significant but apparently inadvertent omission from the gloss).

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

Poloa is a verb that appears in various glyphs in this collection. See a couple of examples below. Over time, tepoloa increasingly became equated with the translation “conquistar” (to conquer), a term especially associated with the Spanish colonizers and their Indigenous allies.

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 K05_B in his TLACHIA digital collection, https://tlachia.iib.unam.mx/tepetlaoztoc/K05_B.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss or Text Image:

Gloss/Text Diplomatic Transcription:

tepolohuatl.

Gloss/Text Normalization:

Tepoloatl

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:

personal name

phonetic dimensions

Syntax:

noun(s)

syllable: po (from poctli, smoke)

syllable: te/ten/teo (from tentli/lips)

syllables/two: ohua from ohuatl, maize stalk

Writing Features:

compound fully phonographic

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Anatomy, human body parts

Gender (male)

Names (personal and/or theonym)

Cultural Content, Credit:

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors:

Shapes and Perspectives:

facing left

profile view

spiraling, swirling, coiling, curling

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

downward

Keywords:

destruir, conquista, matar, humo, labios, tallo, maíz, planta, plantas, nombres de hombres, men’s names, fonetismo

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

poloa, to destroy, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/poloa
te-, nonspecific human object prefix, people, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/te
ohua(tl), a maize stalk, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ohuatl
tzin(tli), rear end, buttocks, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tzintli
-tzin, locative suffix, little, lower, or a spinoff, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tzin

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

Él Que Destruye a la Gente

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.

Orthography:

intrusive "h" or "hu"

Historical Contextualizing Image: