tepetl (Mdz22r)
This element for a hill or mountain (tepetl) has been carved from the compound sign for the place name, Cuauhquemecan. To isolate the tepetl, we removed the eagle head from the top of the hill and the eagle-feather ritual bib (cuauhquemitl) from the middle; then we tried to make the hill as natural as we could. The result is still a two-toned, bell-shaped hill with curling, rocky outcroppings on the right and left slopes and the red and yellow horizontal lines near the base. The red line wraps around the yellow line at each end, following the curve of the bottom of the bell shape.
Stephanie Wood
The rocky outcroppings on the left and right slopes provide a phonetic clue ("te") that this glyph is meant to be read "tepetl." Of course, mountains also typically have rocks. Regarding the yellow and red horizontal stripes, please see the article on Interiors.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood and Xitlali Torres
mountains, hills, montañas, cerros, altepetl, stones, piedras, rocks, rocas
![](https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/tepetl22r%28silent%29tepetl%2ChillFromCuauhquemecan.jpg?itok=vbKn9vOw)
tepe(tl), hill or mountain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tepetl
te(tl), rock or stone, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tetl
el cerro o la montaña
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 22 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 54 of 188.
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, hold the original manuscript, the MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1. This image is published here under the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0).