texcalli (FCbk11f245r)
This iconographic example, featuring a black and white sketch of an oven (texcalli), 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, but it is also called a temazcalli in the text, right after making it clear that a temazcalli was a sweat house. Still, the text explains that a temazcalli could be used for cooking. This example shows a domed structure covered with stucco. It has an arched opening lined with adobe bricks or stone blocks. The base of this dome consists of five layers of larger horizontal bricks or blocks. Inside the opening one can see a butchered animal (tlatemalli) and what may be a tortilla (tlaxcalli) with a single flower design added to it.
Stephanie Wood
This oven is reminiscent of modern pizza ovens; perhaps it shows European influence. It also has shading that gives it a three-dimensionality. If indeed some ovens had the name temazcalli, this may explain the example of a temazcalli from the Codex Quetzaecatzin (below), which could easily be an oven. The other somewhat unusual temazcalli, from the Matrícula de Huexotzinco, is reminiscent of a kiln for tenextli (lime).
Stephanie Wood
texcalli
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
temazcalli, cueva, cocer, cocinar, carnes, tortillas, tlaxcalli, tlatemalli
texcal(li), oven, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/texcalli
el horno
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 245r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/245r/images/0 Accessed 16 November 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.”
