Tzontemoc (FCbk8f10r)

Tzontemoc (FCbk8f10r)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This compound glyph for the personal name Tzontemoc (or Tzontemoctzin, in the reverential form) shows a man’s head (tzontli) in profile, facing the viewer’s right. His hair is black and brown, and his face is a terracotta color. Below the head is a small hill (which would be a tepetl, with its bell shape and horizontal labia toward the base). The hill has a footprint heading downward, descending (to show the verb temoc, it descended). The result may be something like “Descended Head.”

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

Hair, often on a human head, is most often the visual representation for the term tzontli. But tzontli can mean “head,” itself. The verb temo (typically given in the past tense, third person singular, temoc, he descended) will often involve footprints pointed downward. But sometimes, as in this case, the footprint(s) will appear next to a device that helps show descent. This is also seen in the glyph for Temoayan, below, where footprints go down a stepped pyramid.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image:

Gloss Diplomatic Transcription:

tzontemoctzin

Gloss Normalization:

Tzontemoctzin

Gloss Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Florentine/Florentinus, Codex (FC)

Date of Manuscript:

1577

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

Mexico City

Semantic Categories:

personal name

Syntax:

noun(s)

Writing Features:

compound fully logographic

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Anatomy, human body parts

Footprint(s), human

Gender (male)

Landscape Features

Names (personal and/or theonym)

Cultural Content, Credit:

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors:

black

orange/terracotta

white/neutral

Shapes and Perspectives:

facing right

profile view

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

downward

Keywords:

cabezas, descender, bajar, cerro, cerros, huella, huellas, gobernante, gobernantes, gobernador, gobernadores, tlatoani, tlahtoani, tlatoque, tlahtohqueh, teuctli, tecutli, tecuhtli, hombres famosos, nombres de hombres

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

tzon(tli), head or hair, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tzontli
temo, to descend, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/temo

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

posiblemente, La Cabeza Descendió

Spanish Translation, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Image Source:

Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 8: Kings and Lords", fol. 10r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/8/folio/10r/images/6e1d077a-6d... Accessed 6 August 2025.

Image Source, Rights:

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.”

Historical Contextualizing Image: