tetl (FCbk11f83v)
This iconographic example, featuring eggs (tetl) of the fresh water turtle, 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 (a possessed plural noun, iteoā, its eggs) near the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example shows seven spotted eggs on the shore of a body of fresh water. The turtle apparently made a depression in the soil or the sand, where it laid the eggs.
Stephanie Wood
The word tetl can refer, of course, to stones, and this collection has a great many stones or rocks as hieroglyphs or glyphic elements. But our Online Nahuatl Dictionary offers a range of attestations of the term that support a variety of readings, such as eggs, shown here, but also other things that are hard and round and things that serve as counters. For two examples of eggs, see below.
Stephanie Wood
iteoā
itehuan
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
huevos de tortuga, atlannemini, water dweller
te(tl), eggs, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tetl
el huevo
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 63v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/63v/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.”
