teocalli (Mdz10r)

This iconographic example shows a twin temple (teocalli) facing the viewer front-on. Two structures sit atop a shared, wide staircase, which nevertheless has a division down the center. The double staircase is wider at the bottom than at the top, and there are reinforcements where the angular frame shifts to go straight to the top. Two buildings sit atop this twin temple. The top left structure has an open doorway that is framed by turquoise-colored beams. There are two vertical hash marks at the center of the horizontal turquoise beams, reminiscent of the "hua" element (from huahuana, to make stripes, and typically used as a phonetic syllable) found in some glyphs. It almost has the shape of a regular building (calli), but its crest-like roof is elongated and decorated with a square that contains three vertical rectangles. These vertical rectangles have an association with the divine force of rain, Tlaloc, such as was known on the temples in the templos mayores of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco. The structure on the right has an open doorway that is framed by multicolored beams, predominantly red but with white and yellow stripes toward the bottom of the framing. This building also has an additional crest-like roof structure of the same height but a different design. This one has fifteen white circles, one of them (at the top and center) being a big larger than the others. These may be stars, which are usually on a black background, such as the glyph for Citlaltepec (Mdz17v). Of the paired buildings on top of the pyramid, this calli on the right typically has an association with Huitzilopochtli, the divine force of war and the sun. He was believed to have defeated his siblings, the stars. The teocalli from the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (below) has the buildings reversed, as Ian Mursell discusses in a short article in Mexicolore).