oztotl (Mdz24v)

Some interpret this animal as an earth monster. The opening of the cave is therefore through the monster's mouth. According to the book In the Maw of the Earth Monster: Studies of Mesoamerican Ritual Cave Use, eds. James E. Brady and Keith Prufer (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), caves were sacred spaces, sites of rituals, and seen as providing access to the underworld, where there were divinties or deities. See also the analysis of caves by Holley Moyes, "Rites in the Underworld: Caves as Sacred Space in Mesoamerica," in Mexicolore, ed. Ian Mursell, where we learn that caves could overlap with the conceptualization of mouths and uteruses.

For a frontal view, see our oztotl glyph from folio 10 verso of the Codex Mendoza, where some of the features of this sign are presented somewhat differently. The curly designs located above the forehead, under the jaw, and at the back of the head borrow from the symbol for tetl (rock, stone), suggesting that the cave is located in a rocky outcropping, and helping us distinguish this sign from just an animal head. The corner of the mouth and the corner of the eye also possibly convey something of the curliness of the tetl sign. The open jaws provide access to the underworld that can be reached through the cave. A temple at the pre-Hispanic archaeological site of Malinalco has an entrance that involves walking through a serpent or an earth monster's open mouth, and the interior is round and dark, being somewhat cave-like. The ruins at Chalcatzinco also have a stone carving of a simulated cave entrance that involves an opening that is "zoomorphically depicted as the mouth of the mountain lord/lightning deity’s animal familiar or co-essence, which in some cases is a serpent, lizard or crocodile and in others a jaguar," according to John E. Staller (quoted in Mexicolore).