xolo (Mdz38r)

xolo (Mdz38r)
Simplex Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This simplex glyph for the place name Xolochiuhyan doubles as a glyph for xolo, meaning page, servant, or enslaved person. The page is an old man with wrinkles, wearing a white shirt with vertical lines, and looking in profile to our right.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

That this glyph can double as an old wrinkled (xolochtic) man and a page or servant is probably the clothing that he wears. If so, this is a graphic syllepsis, whereby the same image can stand for a page, a wrinkled man, and a place associated with becoming those things.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Mendoza/Mendocino, Codex (Mdz)
Date of Manuscript: 

c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Mexico City

Semantic Categories: 
graphic syllepsis
Syntax: 
noun(s)
Writing Features: 
simplex or element as logogram
Cultural Content & Iconography: 
Aging (People, Animals, Things)
Gender (male)
Labor Issues
Slavery
Social Hierarchy, Commoners, Elites
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Colors: 
orange/terracotta
white/neutral
Shapes and Perspectives: 
facing right
profile view
wrinkles
Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 

xolo, page, servant, or slave, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xolo

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation: 

el paje, el sirviente, o el esclavo

Spanish Translation, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Image Source: 

Codex Mendoza, folio 38 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 86 of 188.

Image Source, Rights: 

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).

See Also: 

Xolochiuhyan (Mdz38r)

xolochtic (Mdz38r)