tecciztli (FCbk11f63r)
This iconographic example, featuring a conch shell (tecciztli), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the keywording of the images on this page in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss or text that is relevant. This example shows a frontal view of a queen conch or pink conch in a water setting, seemingly the ocean. The context is an encyclopedic array of fish and shellfish and even animals, more generally. This shell has a swirl at the top that has about four horizontal rows Below that is a group of five bumps. At about that level, one can see the opening to the shell that runs vertically. It has a red tinge. The lower part of the shell has hints of horizontal lines. The water surrounding the shell also has horizontal lines, but they curve and turn back from left to right on the left edge.
Stephanie Wood
The tecciztli hieroglyphs and other iconographic examples are numerous in this digital collection, which seems to be a measure of their importance in the culture. In a couple of cases, these conch shells portray the creatures that originally lived in them, which this particular record does not have, but at least this one does fall into a group of Florentine Codex records about animals. The other recurring representation of the tecciztli is as a cross-section view, which can appear as an architectural detail or a piece of jewelry.
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
caracoles, mar, océano, caracol, caracola, concha, conchas
tecciz(tli), a conch shell, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tecciztli
el caracol rosado
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 63r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/63r/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.”
