Ce Ehecatl (FCbk4f59r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph plus notation represents a date–Ce Ehecatl (One Wind, or 1-Wind)–in the tonalpohualli, 260-day religious divinatory calendar. The notation of one is shown as a small white circle. The head of what looks like a bird–but represents the divine force of the wind (Ehecatl)--is shown in profile facing toward the viewer’s right. Its beak is open. The upper part of the beak is squared off, suggesting an effort to draw a wind-blowing device that is typically associated with Ehecatl. A vertical line runs through the eye. The head has an oval-shaped, tied (?), bundle on top, sitting at an angle.
Stephanie Wood
Other examples of ehecatl glyphs (below) can be bird-like, too, akin to another animal, or anthropomorphic. Sometimes the glyph is just the blowing device. There is no gloss for this calendrical date on folio 59r, but we are accepting the reading that is given as the image title by the Getty Research Institute.
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
calendario, calendarios, fecha, fechas, días, viento, números, uno
eca(tl), breath or air, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ecatl
eheca(tl), wind, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ehecatl
ce, one, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ce
Uno Viento, o 1-Viento
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 4: The Soothsayers", fol. 59r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/4/folio/59r/images/addea61d-bf... Accessed 19 June 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.”
