Yohualtepec (Mdz8r)

Yohualtepec (Mdz8r)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This compound glyph for the place name Yohualtepec has two main elements. One is the glyph for night, a circle surrounded by seven smaller circles (red and white eyes) on the perimeter and one in the center. The background inside the large circle is a dark grey or purple. The other principal element is the hill or mountain [tepetl, a standard, two-tone green bell shape, with curling rocky outcroppings on the slopes and red and white horizontal stripes near the base. The locative suffix (-c) (as given in the gloss) is not shown visually, but it combines with -tepe- to form -tepec, a visual locative suffix meaning "on the hill" or "on the mountain."

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

The night sky has upside-down U shapes, somewhat like the shapes found on land parcels, such as the tlalli, milli, chinamitl, or ixtlahuatl. This yohualli glyph is similar to the one on folio 39 recto (below, right), but that one also has the dots that appear with the U shapes on land parcels. One can also compare this compound glyph for Yohualtepec with the other one in the Codex Mendoza (below, right); they differ slightly in the shape of the night glyph.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image:

Gloss Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Mendoza/Mendocino, Codex (Mdz)

Date of Manuscript:

c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

Mexico City

Semantic Categories:

place name

Syntax:

locative (visual not silent)

noun(s)

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Anatomy, human body parts

Celestial Phenomena

Landscape Features

Names (places)

Time, Calendar, Frequency

Cultural Content, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Colors:

green (dark)

green (light)

purple (light)/lavender

red

white/neutral

yellow or golden

Shapes and Perspectives:

bell-shaped (upright)

circle, circular or rounded

circle(s) (small, often concentric)

spiraling, swirling, coiling, curling

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

downward

Keywords:

hills, mountains, cerros, montañas, stars, eyes, estrellas, ojos, la noche, nighttime

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

-tepec, on the hill or mountain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tepec

Image Source:

Codex Mendoza, folio 8 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 26, 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).