quiyauhteocuitlatl (FCbk11f178r)

This iconographic example, featuring a stone that fell from the sky (quiyauhteocuitlatl) at the time of thunder and lightning and was later dug up by a farmer, 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 an oval shaped stone that is made of many smaller stones. The context shows a man with an agricultural digging stick (huictli), who has apparently dug up the stone. The text explains that the stone grew year after year, until it was dug up. The text also notes that a certain type of grass typically grows over these kinds of buried stones, and such a tall blade of grass appears here in the contextualizing image. The text further explains that these kinds of stone have health benefits. The term teocuitlatl refers to gold, which was also believed to have fallen from the sky. This one has the added feature of quiyahuitl, rain, given that this particular stone fell during a thunder storm. There are additional vocabulary words for thunder and lightning that can be searched in our Online Nahuatl Dictionary.