Mount Tlaloc

Mount Tlaloc
Highest point
Elevation
Coordinates
Geography
Location	Mexico State and Tlaxcala, Mexico
Geology
Mountain type	Extinct stratovolcano
Volcanic arc/belt	Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt

Mount Tlaloc (Spanish: Cerro Tláloc or El Mirador, Nahuatl: Tlalocatepetl) is a mountain in central Mexico, located immediately due east of Mexico City. Formerly an active volcano, its height is 13,615 ft. (4,151 metres). The mountain was considered by the Nahuan peoples, foremost among them the Aztecs, to be specially sacred to the raingod Tlaloc, since in fact the mountain was believed to be one of his primary earthly dwelling places. Attribution of this and other mountains to the sacred presence of rain deities predates the Aztec era by centuries, even millennia, and at the summit there are still remains of a shrine where high ceremonies would have been carried out. The rites of Tlaloc were otherwise performed at his temples, most famously that occupying one half of the Grand Temple at the heart of the temple precinct of nearby Mexico-Tenochtitlan. The inherent analogy of temple pyramids to sacred mountains allows for the very likely possibility that the central temple of the Aztec capital, as such, was at least partly a symbolic representation of the actual mountain of Tlaloc, and that the summit shrine of the temple was itself an analogue to that atop the mountain.