Acapetlatlan (Mdz47r)

Acapetlatlan (Mdz47r)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This compound glyph for the place name Acapetlatlan consists of two elements, a standing, vertical, turquoise reed (ācatl) plant contained or superimposed in front of a bird's eye view of a yellow, rectangular, hand-woven mat (petlatl). The locative suffix (-tlan) is not shown visually, but the gloss suggests -tlān (place) over -tlah (place of abundance of).

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

The reed (ācatl) appears regularly in glyphs, both because it was a regular feature of the landscape, it was a substance used for thrones, and people slept on reed mats. It was also important because it served as both a day sign and a year sign in the calendar.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image:

Gloss Diplomatic Transcription:

acapetlatlan / pu^o

Gloss Normalization:

Acapetlatlan, 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:

calendrics

year name

day name

Syntax:

locative (not visual)

noun(s)

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Names (places)

Plants, Flora

Technology (all types), plus Tools

Time, Calendar, Frequency

Cultural Content, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Colors:

blue (turquoise)

yellow or golden

Shapes and Perspectives:

dotted, granular, textured

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

front to back

Keywords:

reeds, plants, canes, mats, tules, carrizos, arrows, darts, xiuhpohualli

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

aca(tl), reed plant, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/acatl
petla(tl), woven mat, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/petlatl
-tlan (locative suffix), place, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlan
-tlah (locative suffix), place of abundance of animal of thing, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlah

Karttunen’s Interpretation:

"Reed-Mat Place" [Frances Karttunen, "Critique of glyph catalogue in Berdan and Anawalt edition of Codex Mendoza," unpublished manuscript.]

Additional Scholars' Interpretations:

"Place of Many Reed Mats" (Berdan and Anawalt, 1992, vol. 1, p. 167)

Image Source:

Codex Mendoza, folio 47 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 104 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).