Tlatempan (TK206r)
This is a black-line drawing of a compound Nahuatl hieroglyph for the place name, Tlatempan (perhaps “On the Border”), a part of the altepetl of Tepetlaoztoc (now spelled Tepetlaoxtoc) near Tetzcoco (now spelled Texcoco). This compound glyph consists of three elements. Reading from the bottom upward, the first element is a pair of front teeth (tlantli) with gums. These represent the phonetic syllable -tla- at the start of the place name. Next comes a set of human lips (tentli), which support the phonetic syllable -ten- in the middle of the name. The “n” of -ten- changes to “m” before a “p.” The final element, at the top, is a flag (pamitl), which supplies the phonetic syllable -pan, the locative suffix at the end of the place name.
Stephanie Wood
In the Tetzcoco area, pamitl is the more common spelling for flag than panitl, which is more typical of the central valley and Tepanec region. But regardless of how the Nahuatl term for flag is spelled in different regions, when the flag is serving as a phonetic indicator, it intends -pan, which means on or in. This compound is largely phonetic, with no hint as to the meaning of the place name except for the middle syllable, which can translate as border or edge, just as the “lip” of something in English can refer to the “edge.” Furthermore, in geographic terms, “edge” can refer to a “border.” The place name Atenco, “At the Edge of the Water,” is fairly popular. See some examples below.
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 K04_A in his TLACHIA digital collection, https://tlachia.iib.unam.mx/tepetlaoztoc/K04_A.
Stephanie Wood
tlatepā
Tlatempan
Stephanie Wood
c. 1556
Jeff Haskett-Wood
borde, fronteras, bandera, banderas, banner, banners, nombres de lugares, topónimo, topónimos, fonetismo
ten(tli), lip, border, edge, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tentli
tlan(tli), teeth, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tentli
pam(itl), flag, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pamitl
posiblemente, En la Frontera
Stephanie Wood
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
©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.
