calpixcacalli (FCbk11f242r)
This iconographic example, featuring a black and white sketch of the house of a steward (calpixcacalli), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the text near the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example shows a frontal view of a building with an open door. Sitting inside is a Nahua man in profile, facing left. He has a blanket (perhaps a tilmatli, or tilmahtli with the glottal stop) wrapped around him, tied behind his neck. His feet are bare. He may be the steward (calpixqui, steward or tax collection) to which the building refers. The foreground of the building consists of alternating light and dark stones. The facade of the building shows what may be plain stucco almost a meter up from the bottom. Above that seem to be horizontal planks. The entryway is reinforced with what are likely wooden beams. This sketch includes shading, giving the blanket and the building some three-dimensionality, a European artistic trait.
Stephanie Wood
This digital collection does not have any calpixcacalli or even officers labelled calpixqui as of February 2026. The added analysis field that attaches to the Panchimalco glyph discusses the term calpixcan, a modified loan from Nahuatl that entered Spanish and was used to describe a tax collection house. The text for this iconographic example separates “Calpixca” from “calli,” which may support the existence of “calpixcan,” if the final “n” has dropped away, as was often the case.
Stephanie Wood
Calpixca calli
calpixcacalli
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
mayordomos, casas, edificios
calpixcacal(li), the house of the steward, guard, or majordomo, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/calpixcacalli
la casa de mayordomo
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 242r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/242r/images/0 Accessed 16 November 2025.
Images of the digitized Florentine Codex are made available under the following Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International). For print-publication quality photos, please contact the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana ([email protected]). The Library of Congress has also published this manuscript, using the images of the World Digital Library copy. “The Library of Congress is unaware of any copyright or other restrictions in the World Digital Library Collection. Absent any such restrictions, these materials are free to use and reuse.”
