Tecpatzinco (Mdz8r)

Tecpatzinco (Mdz8r)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This compound glyph for the place name Tecpatzinco includes three prominent elements. One is the upright flint knife (tecpatl), which provides the start to the place name. It sits on a hill or mountain (tepetl), which may serve as the locative or provide information about the location of the place, but it does not have a phonetic contribution here. Below the mountain is the lower half of a human male. The emphasis is on the rear end or buttocks (tzintli) of the person, providing the phonetic indicator for the locative (-tzinco) meaning "little," "lower," or "new" regarding the town name. The final -co locative, but itself, does not appear visually. The person's body is painted a terracotta-orange. Visible to viewers is the white belt that would pertain to his loincloth. He is sitting (cutoff at the middle) upright, in profile, facing to the viewer's left. The flint knife is pointed at the top, and it is half red, half white, divided diagonally at about the middle.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

The knife may be red to suggest blood, given that such knives were used in bloodletting, a form of religious sacrificial offering. Other blades that could be compared to the tecpatl include the itztli, sharp-bladed instruments of obsidian (see below). But the tecpatl blades in the Codex Mendoza are fairly uniform in shape and color, whereas the itztli appear in a range of styles.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

tecpatzinco.puo

Gloss Normalization: 

Tecpatzinco, pueblo

Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Date of Manuscript: 

c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

by 1553 at the latest

Semantic Categories: 
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation): 
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
Keywords: 

nalgas, pedernales, cerros, montañas, hills, mountains, knives, buttocks

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 

tecpa(tl), flint knife, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tecpatl
tzin(tli), rear end, buttocks, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tzintli
-tzinco (locative suffix), lower, little, or new [town], https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tzinco
itz(tli),sharp-bladed instruments of obsidian, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/itztli

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).