tlachtli (FCbk8f42v)
This iconographic example, featuring a ball game ritual (tlachtli), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making potential comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the keywords chosen by the team behind the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss. This example shows two men in a horizontal court that has the shape of a capital letter i, lying on its side. Adobe brick walls appear above and below the court. In the middle of each wall is a ring through which the ball is supposed to pass. The playing area seems to be dirt. On the dirt, between the two men, is a black ball, seemingly made of rubber (olli) strips. The men wear white capes tied on one shoulder, but the capes are not full length; they may be tucked up around the waist to free the movement of the legs. One man is practically sitting, the other is bent forward, arm extended. Both appear to be in motion.
Stephanie Wood
Many–but not all–tlachtli glyphs show the rings on the sides. Perhaps there were less elaborate versions that did not require the rings. Round tamales were wrapped with maize husks in a manner similar to the rubber ball in this setting. Often the rubber ball is shown as smooth, and often it has a white layer on the outside, visible in a cross section.
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
juegos, pelotas, cancha, canchas, jugar, ceremonial, ritual, hule
tlach(tli), ball game and ritual, ball court, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlachtli
el juego de pelota
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 8: Kings and Lords", fol. 42v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/8/folio/42v/images/0 Accessed 24 August 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.”
