Tecpayocan (Azca15)

This painted black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the place name Tecpayocan ("Place with the Aspect of a Knife," or "...Knives") shows a hill or mountain (probably a tepetl) with two flint knives (tecpatl) appearing from just behind, at the top-left of the mountain. The mountain has curling rocky (tetl) outcroppings at the top and midway down on the left slope. The stones are a semantic indicator that mountains are rocky and/or phonetic indicator that the term for mountain starts with te-. The knives are (unusually) rounded at the top, instead of pointed. They are red (at the bottom), black (at the top) and white, the latter color used for the diagonal stripes that cut through the knives. Red often appears at the lower point of flint knives, perhaps suggesting the blood that might be drawn when the knives pierce human or animal flesh.