Temilo (MH816v)

This Temilo is a tlapaltlacuilo (painter). It is unclear whether he is also a warrior, but at least he has the name that recalls the warrior hairstyle. The curving tzontli going off the top of the head is somewhat reminiscent of the way corn silk bends over from the top of a cob of corn (see below). This glyph, involving the hairstyle itself, does not include the phoneticism inherent in the Temilo glyphs that include a stone (Te-) with the shape of the hairstyle coming out of the top of the stone (see below). Another Temilo from the MH shows the base of a column, pointing to the term temimilli (as suggested by Alfonso Lacadena, 2018, 85), meaning "round stone column." This is another, completely different approach to the name Temilo, removed considerably from the warrior hairstyle, but still within scribal discretionary leeway. Temimilli is a phonetic clue to the name Temilo.

The name Temilo deserves further research. A folklore character named Temilo was associated with Mount Tlaloc and was said--in a twenty-first-century ethnographic retelling--to represent the "devil" and have a role in the construction of the cathedral in Puebla. [See: Jay Sokolovsky, Indigenous Mexico Engages the 21st Century, 2016, p. 151.]

A don Pedro Temilo was the first governor of Tlatelolco after the Spanish seized power. [See Justyna Olko, Insignia of Rank in the Nahua World, 2014, p. 210.]