Tezontlalpan (TK206v)

This painted compound Nahuatl hieroglyph stands for the place name Tezontlalpan (“On the Land of Volcanic Stone”). The compound has five elements, and the reading order is downward. At the top is a white stone full of holes (tezontli). The stone is being pierced (calling forth the verb zoa, to pierce) with a sharp tool. This seems to serve as the phonetic syllable -zo-, which reinforces that the stone is not a tetl but a tezontli. Below the stone is a pair of white front teeth (tlantli) with red gums. This supplies the phonetic syllable -tla-, anticipating the tlalli (agricultural land) that appears in the compound below the teeth. The tlalli is shown as a horizontal rectangle, divided in half and dotted to show that it is seeded/planted. The final element is a red swallowtail flag (pamitl) on a terracotta-colored post with a cap on the top. The flag provides the phonetic syllable -pan, for the locative suffix. The tezontli and the tlalli are semantic contributors to the name; everything else is phonetic.

Side Note: The folio numbers are not always clear in the copy published online by the British Museum. Marc Thouvenot gives this page the number K04_B in his TLACHIA digital collection, https://tlachia.iib.unam.mx/tepetlaoztoc/K04_B.