michpilli (FCbk11f68v)
This iconographic example, featuring fish eggs (michpilli), 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 fine-mesh net that is attached to a circular piece of wood and a wooden pole, and the net is full of fish eggs. These eggs are drawn as dozens of small round circles. The eggs and the lower part of the net are still in the water, which has lines of current and three whirlpools (movement). A landscape placement such as this suggests some degree of European artistic influence, but the prevalence of whirlpools seem Mesoamerican.
Stephanie Wood
Interestingly, one might expect these eggs to be called “mich-tetl” (fish-egg), but these eggs are not hard (which, for instance, chicken or turkey eggs can be, and hence they are tetl). Fish eggs are soft. So, instead, a fish egg is a fish’s child. There are no fish eggs in this digital collection yet (as of October 2025), but there are several fishing nets (matlatl).
Stephanie Wood
Michpilli
michpilli
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
peces, huevos de pescados, comida, red, redes, palo, palos, madera, tecnología, pescar
michpil(li), fish eggs, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/michpilli
mich(in), fish, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/michin
pil(li), a child, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pilli
el huevo del pez
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 68v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/68v/images/0 Accessed 16 October 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.”
