Iztapan (Mdz38r)

Iztapan (Mdz38r)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This compound glyph for the place name Iztapan features a round glyph for salt (with small dots inside) and a black footprint above that. The salt has two large concentric circles (black ink drawings) that contain the dots, which represent grains of salt. The footprint is headed in the direction of the viewer's right.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

The footprint can stand for the verb pano, to cross over, especially when it appears above the main component, and this provides the locative suffix for in or on, -pan. [See Gordon Whittaker Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs, 2021, 101.] The result can therefore be a salty landscape feature that people cross over.

While there is no water in this visual, and -pan was added to a stem ending in the letter "a," it could be that the -apan locative suffix is still relevant, perhaps suggesting that this community was near salt water or some water beds were salt was made.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

yztapan. puo

Gloss Normalization: 

Iztapan, pueblo

Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Mendoza/Mendocino, Codex (Mdz)
Date of Manuscript: 

c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Mexico City

Semantic Categories: 
place name
Syntax: 
noun(s)
verb
Cultural Content & Iconography: 
Anatomy, human body parts
Food, Eating, Cooking
Footprint(s), human
Landscape Features
Names (places)
Socio-Political Units, Cities, Towns, Neighborhoods
Transportation, Travel, Roads
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Colors: 
black
black & white drawing (no color)
white/neutral
Shapes and Perspectives: 
dotted, granular, textured
facing right
Parts (compounds or simplex + notation): 
2
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
upward
Keywords: 

salt, feet, cross over, crossing over

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

izta(tl), salt, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/iztatl
pan(o), to cross or cross over, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pano
-pan (locative suffix), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pan
-apan (locative suffix), on or at the waters of, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/apan-0

Image Source: 

Codex Mendoza, folio 38 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 86 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).

See Also: 

iztatl (Mdz38r)

iztatl (Mdz13v)