Tlachinolticpac (Mdz15v)

Tlachinolticpac (Mdz15v)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This compound glyph stands for the place name Tlachinolticpac. It shows a fire or conflagration (tlachinolli) on top (-ticpac) of a hill or mountain (tepetl), but the hill does not have a phonetic value in the place name]. The shape of the fire almost recalls a bird or butterfly with wings raised. The flames are red-orange, and the center is yellow. A small circle resides at the very heart of the fire, almost like a setting sun in a fiery sky. The locative suffix (-ticpac) is visual in its placement.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

The fire-bird or butterfly likeness might not be coincidental. In our Online Nahuatl Dictionary we see an attestation to the word tlachinolli being likened to a cardinal or scarlet macaw (cuezalin, and cuezalin feathers appear much like flames in various glyphs in the Codex Mendoza. Furthermore, the wings of a butterfly can flicker like flames of a fire, and so butterflies have an association with fire. [See: Markman and Markman, Masks of the Spirit, 1989, 148.] See also the glyphs, below, for the name Tlepapalotl (flame-butterfly).

Tlachinolli is part of the diphrase or diphrasism, in atl, in tlachinolli (disaster), that literally refers to water and scorched earth. Katarzyna Mikulska (2020, 52-54) discusses the possibility for diphrasisms and metonymic series (after Dehouve) to be "represented graphically." She gives various examples of the atl-tlachinolli diphrase. See also Mercedes Montes de Oca Vega's discussion of couplets in Nahuatl (with iconographic expressions) in Mexicolore.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image:

Gloss Diplomatic Transcription:

tlachinolticpac

Gloss Normalization:

Tlachinolticpac

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)

Writing Features:

compound fully logographic

Cultural Content & Iconography:

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

Feathers

Fire, Tobacco, Incense, Smoke

Landscape Features

Metaphors, Proverbs, Riddles

Names (places)

Socio-Political Units, Cities, Towns, Neighborhoods

War or Conflict

Cultural Content, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Shapes and Perspectives:

bell-shaped (upright)

circle(s) (small, often concentric)

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

downward

Keywords:

fires, war, conflagration, something burned, feathers, plumas, birds

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

tlachinol(li), conflagration, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlachinolli
-ti- (ligature), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ti
-icpac (locative suffix, above or on top), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/icpac

Additional Scholars' Interpretations:

James Lockhart (The Nahuas, 1992, 120) refers to the name Yaotlachinol, witnessed in a census from the Cuernavaca region (1535–45), calling it as "The Scorching of War."

Image Source:

Codex Mendoza, folio 15 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 41 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).