City Glyph – Tututepec
This is a glyph from the Zouche-Nuttal Codex. The bottom element is a hill, which indicates a place, with a birds beak and what looks to be an “H”, but is more likely to be the symbol for a Mesoamerican ball-court as they were shaped like an “H” or “I”. The result is “The Place of Birds” or “The Hill of Birds”. As so many cities were built on hills it is hard to tell whether the image of a hill became symbolic of a place or descriptive of a hill. Above the hill is a temple building with a thatched roof, but as the lower part of the image describes the location, this upper part seem quite redundant – unless there were two Hill of the Birds…
