Tlamimilolpan (TK204r)

This painted compound Nahuatl hieroglyph shows the district of Tlamimilolpan (perhaps, “On the Mound”) , a part of the altepetl of Tepetlaoztoc (spelled Tepetlaoxtoc today), near modern Tetzcoco (spelled Texcoco today). It shows a hill (tepetl), serving as a silent locative (-tla, where there is abundance) and an indicator that this is a settlement. The hill is a bell shape that is painted blue. It has a horizontal red stripe at the bottom, which would be the site where a natural spring might emerge. Cutting through the hieroglyph is a road (presumably, an otli) that circles the larger map-like painting upon which this hieroglyph appears. At the top of the hill the top halves of two arrows (mitl) stand up. They serve as a phonetic indicator of the -mimi- in the middle of the place name. Interestingly, they reduplicated syllable is also visually reduplicated here. The arrows have brown segmented shafts and black-and-white feathers as fletching. The upright stance of the arrows may speak to the “tipped up” definition of tlamimilolli.