tepehualiztli (Mdz13v)

tepehualiztli (Mdz13v)
Simplex Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This simplex glyph for tepehualiztli (the defeat of enemies) combines the elements of a building (teocalli) on fire and the roof tipping over. Smoke (poctli), colored purple and terracotta or orante, pours out (popoca, smokes), and a red flame (tletl) with a turquoise band at the middle also emerges from the tipping roof. The roof is yellow and brown, as though it might be thatch. There are also two terracotta-colored beams, one vertical and one horizontal at the building's entrance. The building is from a side view. The foundations of the buuilding are white. This image repeats many times across many pages in the Codex Mendoza. We have only captured this one example, owing to all the repetition.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

The visual elements in this compound glyph do not enter into the phonetic reading of the glyph. It is an ideogram. Alternate readings include tepehua (to defeat) and its root, pehua (to attack, when in a war context), or popoloa (to erase, abolish, or destroy through battle). The suggestion that it might be a teocalli (religious temple) comes from another glyph so identified in this collection that appears to have a thatched roof (below). But see also the teocalli in the place name Teocalhueiacan (below), which is a burning temple, suggesting it was attacked and possibly brought under colonial hegemony.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Date of Manuscript:

c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

Mexico City

Syntax:

noun(s)

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Architecture, Construction, Buildings

Fire, Tobacco, Incense, Smoke

Religion (Indigenous)

War or Conflict

Cultural Content, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Colors:

Shapes and Perspectives:

profile view

rectangular

spiraling, swirling, coiling, curling

stepped

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

tepehualiz(tli), a defeat, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tepehualiztli
tepehua, to defeat, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tepehua
pehua, to attack (when used in a war context), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pehua
popoloa, to destroy in battle, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/popoloa

Spanish Translation, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Image Source:

Codex Mendoza, folio 13 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 37 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).