Tampatel (Mdz10v)

Tampatel (Mdz10v)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

The compound glyph for the place name Tampatel includes two notable visual elements. At the top appears to be a liver (elli, eltapachtli, or teltapach). It is shaped like a flower and it is predominantly red with yellow tips and a yellow base. It sits on top of a hill or mountain, the typical two-tone green bell shape with curling rocky outcroppings on the slopes and yellow and red horizontal stripes at the base. The hill may provide a silent locative.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

This compound glyph refers to a town in the Huasteca (Huaxtec country), where so many community names begin with Tam- (which means "place" in Huaxtec). Here, the tepetl) (hill, mountain) sign is a visual but silent locative (roughly the equivalent of Tam-), what Gordon Whittaker would call a "semantic complement." The sign on top of the mountain, according to Berdan and Anawalt, represents a liver, which could provide the -tapa- sound, as liver in Nahuatl is eltapachtli. The Aztecs were trying to approximate the phonetics of a town name from Huaxtec. Despite the liver interpretation, in the end, Berdan and Anawalt (1992, v. 1, p. 205), suggest the English translation of this place name as "Place of Metal." The author of the Dictionnaire de la langue nahuatl classique (on line), suggests coral. See: http://sites.estvideo.net/malinal/1.hist/T.html Coral, in Nahuatl, is tapachtli. The artists of the Codex Mendoza were familiar with coral and did use it for another Huaxtec place name, as shown below.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

tanpatel .puo

Gloss Normalization: 

Tampatel, pueblo (in the State of Veracruz today)

Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Date of Manuscript: 

c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Mexico City

Semantic Categories: 
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

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

If the tepetl provides the semantica equivalent of Tam-, the order should begin at the bottom. But there is some phonetic reinforcement of the Ta(m), perhaps, in the liver. It could be that the liver was meant to provide the final -el; but that would also provide an upward reading order.

Other Cultural Influences: 
Keywords: 

organs, livers, hígados, cerros, montañas

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Additional Scholars' Interpretations: 

"Place of Metal" (Berdan & Anawalt, 1992, v. 1, p. 205)

Image Source: 

Codex Mendoza, folio 10 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 31 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).