tzoncalli (TK221v)
This painted example of iconography features a multicolored headdress that we are labeling a tzoncalli, based on the Spanish-language gloss, “los penachos.”) This tzoncalli has an earth monster face that likely represents a cave (oztotl), a motif that is important in the hieroglyph for the name of this town, Tepetlaoztoc. The face is shown in a frontal view. Its eyes and mouth are open, and the teeth are sharp. The roof of the mouth has curving lines that give it a sense of depth. The perimeter of the head has rocky outcroppings that also support the impression that this is a cave. Growing out of the top of the cave are what appear to be flowering cacti. The upper part of the tzoncalli is a green oval with more than a dozen small gold discs around it. The bottom part of the headdress has a horizontal row of more gold discs and then rows of horizontal stripes in blue, red, gold, and green. The discs are outlined in red. Finally, what appears to be a spotted strip of jaguar skin hangs down below the stripes.
Stephanie Wood
The contextualizing image shows how four headdresses appear on this manuscript page, followed by seven more on the next two pages. Each one is unique, but plants and animals are the dominant themes. Headdresses of various shapes and sizes are regular features of this digital collection. Some appear in hieroglyphs, and many are included as iconographic examples, such as the considerable number from the Telleriano-Remensis Codex. Either way, the majority of headdresses have feathers, whereas feathers are not the predominant feature of this tzoncalli in the Tepetlaoztoc Codex.
Stephanie Wood
los penachos
Stephanie Wood
c. 1556
Jeff Haskett-Wood
cueva, cuevas, monstruo, monstruos, monsters, headdresses, tocado, tocados, penachos, flores, plantas, colores
tzoncal(li), a headdress (in this case), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tzoncalli
el penacho
Stephanie Wood
The Codex Kingsborough, also known as the Códice de Tepetlaoztoc, and the Memorial de los indios de Tepetlaoztoc, is not on display. It was transferred from the British Library and is now held by the British Museum. It is shared on line at: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Am2006-Drg-13964
©The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. Please also cite the <em>Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphsem>, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities Projects, 2020-present) and this URL.
