Mixcoac (Mdz5v)
This compound glyph for the place name Mixcoac has two fused elements, including a serpent or snake [coatl) that has turquoise-colored clouds (mixtli) built into its back in a scalloped shape. The snake's head and only part of its body is shown. Its head is in profile, facing to the viewer's left. The underside of its body is white. Its bifurcated tongue is red, similar to a flame. Also visible are an eye, a nostril, and fangs. The locative suffix (-c) is not shown visually.
Stephanie Wood
The underbelly of the snake is not scaled or segmented the way it is in some other representations (see below, right). Sharing some characteristics of other representations of the coatl, this serpent is only partial; in some representations we have a full snake, and in some we have a half of a snake. The place name is close to the name of a divine force (Mixcoatl) that apparently came into Nahua culture from the Chichimecs. It may be that this town was considered the place of Mixcoatl. The location of the modern Mixcoac is in the southern part of Mexico City today, but in Post-Classic times it was on the shore of Lake Tetzcoco. There is still an archaeological site there. Wikipedia provides some information about this community, which has been designated a "magical neighborhood" (barrio mágico).
Mixcoatl is a popular men's name in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco, where the compound glyph typically has the clouds separated from (or sitting behind or on the back of) the serpent. (See below.)
Stephanie Wood
mixcoac / puo
Mixcoac, pueblo
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
snakes, serpents, clouds, turquoise, cohuatl
mix(tli), cloud, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/mixtli
coa(tl), serpent or snake, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/coatl
Mixcoa(tl), Cloud Serpent, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/mixcoatl
-c (locative suffix), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/c
"Cloud-Snake Place" or "On Mixcoatl" [Frances Karttunen, unpublished manuscript, used here with her permission.]
"On the Cloud-Snake" or "On Mixcoatl" (Berdan and Anawalt, 1992, vol. 1, p. 193)
"El Lugar del Serpiente-Nube"
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Codex Mendoza, folio 5 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 21 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).
