xacalli (FCbk11f243r)

xacalli (FCbk11f243r)
Iconography

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This iconographic example, featuring a house with a thatched roof (xacalli), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the text near the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example shows a simple building or house (calli) with beams linking the entryway and walls made, perhaps, of adobe bricks. The roof is made from grasses in five horizontal rows. This building is placed in a landscape setting, surrounded by ground. The setting shows European artistic influence.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

The term xacalli entered Spanish as jacal, which can mean shack, hut, or hovel. In Nahuatl it referred more to a thatched-roof house. This is the first one to enter this collection (as of February 2026). In Nahuatl hieroglyphs, thatch is especially common on maize grain storage buildings (cuezcomatl) and, in this collection, it appears on several teocalli (see below). In the example from the Tierras collection in the Archivo General de la Nación, México, one can see the materials applied on the top of the thatch that held it in place.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss or Text Image:

Gloss/Text Diplomatic Transcription:

Xacalli

Gloss/Text Normalization:

xacalli

Gloss/Text Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Florentine/Florentinus, Codex (FC)

Date of Manuscript:

1577

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

Mexico City

Syntax:

noun(s)

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Architecture, Construction, Buildings

Gender (male)

Plants, Flora

Cultural Content, Credit:

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors:

black & white drawing (no color)

Shapes and Perspectives:

frontal view

shading and parallel line hatching

three-dimensionality

Other Cultural Influences:

Spanish/European

Keywords:

jacales, zacate, hierba, césped, techo, techos

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

xacal(li), a grass hut, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xacalli

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

el jacal, o la casa de paja

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 11: Earthly Things", fol. 243r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/243r/images/0 Accessed 16 November 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: