Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina (FCbk8f1v)

Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina (FCbk8f1v)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This compound glyph for the personal name Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina (or "Huehue," the elder) shows a horizontal rectangle (with various details and in multiple colors) being pierced from below by an arrow. The rectangle has the iconography of a band of sky (ilhuicatl). To shoot an arrow (mina) is what the arrow piercing the sky implies. The resulting full name is "He Becomes Angry Like a Lord, He Shoots Arrows at the Sky." This elder Motecuhzoma was born at the end of the fourteenth century and ruled Tenochtitlan in the fifteenth.

The details of the multilayered sky band include, at the top level, a horizontal band of red, below that is a horizontal black band with four turquoise blue circles with black dots in the center The next level down is another red horizontal band, and below that a turquoise blue one. Finally, suspended from the bottom band are three circles of an orange color, each with a black dot in the center. Piercing the sky is a yellow reed arrow with two small orange stripes and one black-outlined red stripe. The arrow has fletching consisting of a gray and white down feather or down ball at the base of a longer, pointed feather that is turquoise blue with a red border.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

This glyph most closely resembles the one–also with a sky band–for the elder Motecuhzoma that can be found in the Codex Mendoza (7v), below. The Codex Telleriano-Remensis uses a colorful rounded diadem.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

Veue Motecuçoma

Gloss Normalization: 

Huehue Motecuhzoma [a.k.a. Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina]

Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Date of Manuscript: 

1577

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Mexico City

Semantic Categories: 
Syntax: 
Writing Features: 
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation): 
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
Keywords: 

rulers, gobernantes, arrows, flechas, sky, skies, cielos, star, stars, estrellas, feather, feathers, pluma, plumas, nombres famosos, nombres de hombres

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 
Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation: 

Motecuhzoma el Viejo (nombre de un gobernante)

Spanish Translation, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Image Source: 

Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 8: Kings and Lords", fol. 1r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/8/folio/1v/images/0 Accessed 21 June 2025.

Image Source, Rights: 

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.”

Historical Contextualizing Image: