tletl (FCbk11f213r)
his iconographic example, featuring a fire (tletl) for melting down gold, is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected based on the look of the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se, and no reference to this fire in the nearby text. This example shows a pot sitting on a fire made with four or five crossing logs (given the keyword cuauhtlatilli by the DFC keywording team). The pot is melting down huge gold nuggets (“the mother of gold”). Two men blow on the fire (tletl, tlenenepilli) with a flute-like instrument (tlapitzalli). The landscape setting and the shading on the men’s clothing all imply European influence in the artistic style.
Stephanie Wood
This is the only example in this digital collection (as of December 2025) that includes tools for the purpose of blowing oxygen onto a fire to increase its intensity. Another example appears in Book 11 of the Florentine Codex on folio 215 recto. That man’s motion is described in the text at tepuzpitza (tepozpitza), as he is blowing on what appear to be coals in a large vessel in order to melt the copper (tepoztli) from the ore. A similar pipe appears on folio 215 verso, where a man works on the melting of the temetztli (lead) ore.
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
llamas, oro, leña, hombres, macehuales, flauta, flautas, pipa, pipas, aire, viento, herramientas, fuegos
tle(tl), fire, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tletl
el fuego
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 213r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/213r/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.”
