huehuetl (FCbk9f30v)
This iconographic example, featuring the standing wooden drum (huehuetl), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the keywords chosen by the team behind the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss. This example shows a frontal view of a man wearing a white cape (with purple shadows for three-dimensionality) standing behind the drum and hitting with his hands the hide that is stretched over the top. At the base of the drum is a stepped-shape cutout, which is a typical design. Above that opening is an unusual horizontal row of three yellow circles with red centers on a turquoise blue background. This horizontal stripe has red boundaries above and below it. The drummer wears a green headband. In the contextualizing image, four men, two on each side, dance to the drumming. Such a dance was a netotiliztli. They carry things like flowers (xochitl), fans (ecacehuaztli), and rattles (ayacachtli). Two have their mouths open as though they are singing (cuica).
Stephanie Wood
Hieroglyphs showing the huehuetl drum appear below. The tlacuilos, in these cases, give the idea of the drum without providing a lot of detail. Often, the drums do not appear to have been as tall as usual. For other iconographic examples of this type of drum being played, do a Quick Search for huehuetl.
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
tambor vertical, tambores, madera, cantar, bailar, flores, sonajas, percusión, tocar, tzotzona
huehue(tl), a standing, cylindrical wooden drum, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/huehuetl
el atabal (credit the appropriate field=Alonso de Molina)
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 9: The Merchants", fol. 30v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/9/folio/30v/images/326b5d75-bd... Accessed 30 August 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.”
