tzotzopaztli (FCbk6f170v)
This iconographic example, featuring a weaving batten (tzotzopaztli) 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 a tied horizontal bundle of three weaving implements, perhaps all made from wood, although some smaller battens were carved from bone, and the term matzotzopaztli refers to the ulna. At least one in the bundle of three tools shown here, is a batten, perhaps the top one. The top one has sharp points, while the other two have triangles at each end, which would likely prevent threads from slipping off the ends. The pointed one could slip more easily between the threads of the warp and push down the weft.
Stephanie Wood
Besides being a tool for weaving, the tzotzopaztli was, in a sense, a woman’s knife, sword, or machete, certainly symbolic of her power but also possibly wielded in conflicts. In a scene in the primordial titles of Ocoyacac, a woman carries a “tzutuzpastli” in an aggressive stance alongside men holding clubs (the macuahuitl) with embedded obsidian points. The tzotzopaztli was also a ritual object, as an article in Mexico Desconocido describes. Images show some examples carved with culturally meaningful figures. The divine force Ilamateuctli holds a tzotzopaztli in a detail from the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. As of summer 2025, we do not yet have any glyphs showing the tzotzopaztli. In our digital collection.
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
listón, listones, implemento para tejer, herramienta de tejido, textiles
tzotzopaz(tli), a batten, a weaving implement, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tzotzopaztli
el palo de telar, or el machete tejedor
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 6: Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy", fol. 170v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/6/folio/170v/images/0. Accessed 7 July 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.”
