Tonalla (TK207r)

Tonalla (TK207r)
Compound Hieroglyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This painted compound Nahuatl hieroglyph represents the place name Tonalla (“Place of Abundant Sunshine,” heat, or solar energy). The sun is a round yellow face with short, thick, curving rays coming off of the outer circle, looking something like a sunflower’s petals. The face has a mouth, a hint of a nose, eyes, and eyebrows. Below the sun is a pair of teeth (tlantli), supplying the phonetic syllable for the locative suffix -tla.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

This place name could also be Tonallan (“Near the Sun” or “Near the Solar Energy”) if the final “n” in the name inadvertently dropped away, as can often happen. But, either way, this sun is the significant semantic contributor, and it shows European artistic influence. Compare it to the suns in the Codex Mendoza and the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (below). A great many suns in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco of 1560 have faces on them. The timeline for this artistic evolution would be interesting to track, as it might help date manuscripts whose date of composition is uncertain.

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 K05_A in his TLACHIA digital collection, https://tlachia.iib.unam.mx/tepetlaoztoc/K05_A.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss or Text Image: 
Gloss/Text Diplomatic Transcription: 

tonalla

Gloss/Text Normalization: 

Tonalla

Gloss/Text Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Tepetlaoztoc, Codex (aka Kingsborough) (TK)
Date of Manuscript: 

c. 1556

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Tepetlaoztoc, East of Lake Tetzcoco

Semantic Categories: 
phonetic dimensions
place name
Syntax: 
noun(s)
Writing Features: 
compound of phonogram(s) & logogram(s)
Cultural Content & Iconography: 
Anatomy, human body parts
Celestial Phenomena
Names (places)
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors: 
red
white/neutral
yellow or golden
Shapes and Perspectives: 
frontal view
Parts (compounds or simplex + notation): 
2
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
downward
Other Cultural Influences: 
Spanish/European
Keywords: 

calor, luz solar, energia, caras, nombres de lugares, topónimos, topónimo

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 

tonal(li), the sun, heat, or solar energy, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tonalli
tonatiuh, the sun, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tonatiuh
-tla, locative suffix, place of abundance of a thing, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tla-1

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation: 

posiblemente, Lugar del Sol Abundante

Spanish Translation, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Image Source: 

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

Image Source, Rights: 

©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.

Historical Contextualizing Image: 
See Also: 

Tonatiuhco (Mdz34r)

tonatiuh cualo (TR31r)