tozan (FCbk11f17v)
This iconographic example, featuring a gopher (tozan, also called the tuzan), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the Nahuatl text near the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example shows a small yellow animal with a long tail. It is shown in profile, facing the viewer’s right. Its coat is mottled, and its belly is white. From the drawing, it is difficult to tell if this is a gopher or a field mouse.
Stephanie Wood
In this collection, the glyphs for the tozan vary greatly; perhaps the artists were not familiar with the animal (just as the translators were unsure between the gopher and other species), or there were a number of small animals that might bear the name tozan. It is also interesting how this animal term was given as a personal name.
Stephanie Wood
Toçan
tozan
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
tuzas, la ardilla de la tierra, animales, topo, topos, rata, ratas
tozan, a gopher or a field mouse, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tozan
la tuza
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 17v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/17v/images/0 Accessed 7 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.”
