Tezcacoac (Mdz20v)

Tezcacoac (Mdz20v)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This compound glyph for the place name Tezcacoac (perhaps "At the Mirror-Serpent") includes a building or house (calli), which does not play a phonetic role here, but may be a semantic locative. The glyph also has a purplish-gray, scaly serpent (coatl) with a white belly. The serpent, with its red and yellow, bifurcated tongue, is emerging from the building, in the direction of the viewer's right. On the serpent is a mirror (tezcatl), a circle of red with a black center and four evenly-spaced small red circles around the circumference.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

The locative suffix -c is not shown visually, but the house, which is visual but silent, serves something like a locative and therefore probably what Gordon Whittaker would call a "semantic complement."

The association between mirrors and serpents calls to fore the possibility of a supernatural reading. The nahualtezcatl, which was a mirror for divining, may tie in with this.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image:

Gloss Diplomatic Transcription:

tezcacoac. pu^o

Gloss Normalization:

Tezcacoac, pueblo

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

semantic complement

Syntax:

locative (visual but silent)

noun(s)

Writing Features:

compound fully logographic

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Animals, incl. Birds, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, etc.

Architecture, Construction, Buildings

Names (places)

Socio-Political Units, Cities, Towns, Neighborhoods

Technology (all types), plus Tools

Cultural Content, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Colors:

Shapes and Perspectives:

rectangular

bifurcated

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

front to back

Keywords:

snakes, serpents, mirrors, buildings, serpientes, espejos, cohuatl

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

tezca(tl), mirror, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tezcatl
coa(tl), snake or serpent, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/coatl
-c (locative suffix), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/c
nahualtezca(tl), a mirror used for divining, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nahualtezcatl

Image Source:

Codex Mendoza, folio 20 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 51 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).