tenixyo (FCbk4f71v)
This example supports the iconography of the textile design called tenixyo (a border with a design that resembles a row of eyes). This border appears on the cape or cloak (tilmatli) of a ruler (tlatoani, or tlahtoani) who is sitting on an icpalli throne in a rare frontal view, looking at the observer. The design appears both around the neck and along the bottom edge of the garment. The border of the design has white edges, and the eyes are red with black centers on a black background. The cloak is a gray or blue color. It has shading that provides a three-dimensionality, which reveals European artistic influence.
Stephanie Wood
While this image is not glossed, the team at the Digital Florentine Codex gave this image the keyword of tenixyo (or, with the glottal stop, tenixyoh), which we are honoring here. See another tenixyo border on a cloth in the Codex Mendoza, below. The pupils of the eyes of that tenixyo are red. The eyes of both of these textile designs vaguely resemble the starry eyes that sometimes also appear in the night sky, as shown below in the Yohuallan glyphs.
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
textiles, tilmatli, tilmahtli, tilma, manta, diseños, motivo, patrón, ojos
tenixyo, bordered with eyes, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tenixyo
ten(tli), edge, border, chin, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tentli
ix(tli), eye(s), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ixtli
-yotl, having the nature of, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/yotl
el bordeado de ojos
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 4: The Soothsayers", fol. 71v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/4/folio/71v/images/c49d2839-75... Accessed 28 June 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.”
