Iztitlan (Mdz16v)
This is a brown, red, and white painting of the simplex glyph for the place name Iztitlan ("Near the [Claw] Nail"). It shows the nail (itztitl) and part of a claw of an animal with a two-tone coat (or feather covering), brown on top and terracotta-colored on the bottom. The claw has a sharp, curving nail. The nail is colored red and white in a way that recalls a tecpatl (flint or obsidian knife). The nail and the flint knife are both sharp objects. The locative suffix (-tlan) is not shown visually.
Stephanie Wood
In this manuscripts, the claws of eagles are generally yellow. Perhaps it is the claw of a ferocious wildcat or coyote. Nevertheless, sharp claws are not featured on glyphs for the coyotl, the miztli, or the tecuani in this collection. So, this is something to watch, which bird or animal was though of having claws and nails as sharp as a tecpatl.
Stephanie Wood
ytztitlan. puo
Itztitlan, pueblo
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
nails, claws, sharp, flint knives, clavos, garras, pedernales, uñas
itzti(tl), nail, claw, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/itztitl
-tlan (locative suffix), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlan
Codex Mendoza, folio 16 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 43 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).
