Coyotl Inahual (FCbk9f59r-v)
This is an example of a nahualli, included here for its iconography. This figure is described in the text as “in ixiptla coiotl inaoal,” referring to the likeness of the shape-shifting coyote and treating the figure as a deity with the name Coyotl Inahual (“Coyote’s Nahual” or “Coyote’s Shape-Shifting Animal Spirit”) and associating it with the month of Panquetzaliztli. A man–with the head of a coyote–is dressed in white colonial cotton textiles (with gray shading that gives it a three-dimensionality). He appears in a three-quarter view, standing and looking toward the viewer’s right. The coyote’s head is brown and its coat is textured somewhat. As the contextualizing image shows, in that space on the right are three seated men in the opening of a palace. They are wearing capes with large ants on the front.
Stephanie Wood
The original text that mentions this figure has the expression spread over two lines, which we have reunited for the ease of checking it, below. See also some of the other glyphs from this collection of the term nahualli, below. One is specifically called the same thing as this iconographic example, Coyotl Inahual. It is from the Matricula de Huexotzinco (f. 667r). But that glyph simply shows a man’s head with a coyote’s head on top. As the other examples also show, it was fairly consistent to place a nahualli on top of a human head. But, as a quick search in this collection for the term nahualli will also bear out, some nahualli glyphs are like caterpillars. Of course, caterpillars were shape shifters, because they would turn into butterflies.
Stephanie Wood
coioitl inaoal
Coyotl Inahual
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
nahual, nahuales, cambiaforma, cambiaformas, animales, coyote, coyotes, nombres de deidades, nombres de fuerzas divinas
nahual(li), a shape-shifting spirit, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nahualli
coyo(tl), coyote, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/coyotl
El Nahual del Coyote
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 9: The Merchants", fol. 59v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/9/folio/59v?spTexts=&nhTexts= Accessed 22 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.”
