tlantli (Mdz51r)
This element of teeth (tlantli) has been carved from the compound sign for the place name, Teciuhtlan, and provides a phonetic element for the locative suffix -tlan. In that compound, it has nothing to do with actual teeth. But the glyph for teeth here shows two front teeth with a surrounding red gum. The teeth each have two hash marks at the center of the lower edge. In the compound, this element played a phonetic role, but here we will just call it a logogram
Stephanie Wood
The glyph or element with two front teeth is the norm. Searching the collection for the word "tlantli" will show this. One will also see that sometimes the teeth will number three, four, or even five! As Gordon Whittaker discovered, the use of a partial set of upper and lower teeth tends to be the case when the locative suffix -tlan is preceded by the ligature -ti-, resulting in -titlan. The quasi-full set can be imbedded in a tree trunk, for example, in a profile view, or sticking out, also in a profile view. Occasionally, the full set of teeth will appear in a frontal view imbedded in a substance, such as dark gray ashes. See below for examples.
Human teeth do typically have ridges caused by the labial lobes on the facial sides. This can explain the two short vertical lines on each tooth in the standard glyphs that have the upper front teeth. It is a realistic representation.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, by 1553 at the latest
place, locative, teeth, dientes
tlan(tli), teeth, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlantli
-tlan, by, near, among, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlan
teeth or place
Codex Mendoza, folio 51 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 112 of 118.
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).
