Tollan (CMpl18)

Tollan (CMpl18)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This compound glyph for the place name Tollan includes two principal visual elements, an upright reed (tollin) and a horizontal set of four lower teeth (tlantli) below it, providing the phonetic value for the locative suffix (-tlan). The reed is yellow and green and has a number of leaves or branches.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

This sign appears to have a connection in this document (the Codex Mexicanus) to Aztlan (origin point of the Tenochca), according to María Castañeda de la Paz (see ch. 3 in the publication of the codex in 2019 by Castañeda de la Paz and Michel R. Oudijk). This Tollan is not the Tollan of Tula or Cholula. To compare, see the map of Cholula in the group of Relaciones Geográficas hosted by the University of Texas at Austin has a glyph for Tollan-Cholula in the upper right quadrant. In the combining of the final -l of the morpheme tol- from tolin (tules) and the beginning tl- of tlan- from tlantli (teeth, serving as the locative), the t standardly drops away. This tule is taller than the reeds found in the Codex Mendoza, for example, and the teeth differ, too. There are many interesting variations on the sign for -tlan in this database.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Mexicanus, Codex (Mxnus)

Date of Manuscript:

1551–1588

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

Mexico City, at least partly in San Sebastián Atzacualco, Tenochtitlan

Semantic Categories:

place name