apantli (Mdz37r)
This element showing a waterway (apantli) has been carved from the compound sign for the place name, Chilapan. This waterway has horizontal black lines of current of varying thicknesses. Two splashes come up over the top of the water way, one ending in a white droplet or jade bead and the other ending in a white turbinate shell. If it had not been for the chile pepper that was on the original compound glyph, there probably would have been more splashes at the top. The canal's liner is yellow. The overall shape is trapezoidal.
Stephanie Wood
The apantli glyph or element can have a wide range of color combinations for the lining around the water, while the representation of the water remains much the same (but with or without the splashes coming off the top). The lining can be a single color (red, yellow, or green), or it can be two or three colors. See some examples below.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
waterways, canals, channels, shells
apan(tli), water channel or canal, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/apantli
pan(tli), furrow, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pantli
-apan (locative suffix), on the water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/apan-0
a(tl), water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atl
-pan (locative suffix), on, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pan
water channel
el canal, o en la orilla del agua
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 37 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 84 of 188.
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).
