Tzompanco (Azca14)

Tzompanco (Azca14)
Simplex Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the place name Tzompanco (“At the Skull Rack”) shows a stepped platform with the rack at the top. The rack has two horizontal rungs that are tied onto the two upright posts. Each rung has one skull, and they are both shown in profile, facing left. The locative suffix -co is implicit.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

As shown in the contextualizing image, the right side of the platform is obscured by the figure of Huitzilopochtli. We have tried to reconstruct what it might have looked like based on the left side. The steps going up the front and sides are vaguely reminiscent of the elaborate platform of the skull rack in the Tzompanhuacan glyph in the Codex Mendoza, folio 35 recto. The skull racks in this collection that come from the Codex Mendoza also have skulls in profile. The ones from the Telleriano Remensis and the Beineke Map have their skulls facing the viewer.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image:

Gloss Diplomatic Transcription:

tzonpanco

Gloss Normalization:

Tzompanco

Gloss Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Azcatitlan, Codex (Azca)

Date of Manuscript:

post-1550, possibly from the early seventeenth century.

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

perhaps Tlatelolco, Mexico City

Semantic Categories:

place name

Writing Features:

simplex or element as logogram

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Anatomy, human body parts

Architecture, Construction, Buildings

Death, decay, decomposition

Names (places)

Socio-Political Units, Cities, Towns, Neighborhoods

Wood, wooden things

Cultural Content, Credit:

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Shapes and Perspectives:

tied, bound, or bundled

Keywords:

cráneos, muertes, morir, plataformas, topónimos, pueblos, nombres de lugares

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

tzompan(tli), skull rack, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tzompantli

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

En el Plataforma de Calaveras

Spanish Translation, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Image Source:

The Codex Azcatitlan is also known as the Histoire mexicaine, [Manuscrit] Mexicain 59–64. It is housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and hosted on line by the World Digital Library and the Library of Congress, which is “unaware of any copyright or other restrictions in the World Digital Library Collection.”
https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15280/?sp=14&st=image

Image Source, Rights:

The Library of Congress is “unaware of any copyright or other restrictions in the World Digital Library Collection.” But please cite Bibliothèque Nationale de France and this Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs.

Orthography:

"n" for m (before p)

Historical Contextualizing Image: