ehuatl (FCbk6f211v)
This iconographic example, featuring an animal hide (ehuatl) 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 keyword (oceloehuatl, jaguar skin) chosen by the team behind the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss. This example shows a bird’s eye view of a spotted jaguar skin at the feet of a tlatoani (or tlahtoani, with the glottal stop). The animal’s whole head is preserved, including a visible open eye, an open mouth, and visible teeth. The companion text speaks to a peaceful rulership (“ihuiyan tlahtocayotl”).
Stephanie Wood
This digital collection includes several animal hides, often as elements of compounds, and some as phonetic dimensions (for -ehua). It remains to be seen if any are jaguar (ocelotl) skins–some are not. Irregular edges and a bird’s eye view are elements that do recur.
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
pieles, cuero, cueros, jaguar, jaguares

ehua(tl), a skin or hide, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ehuatl
la piel de animal
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. 211v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/6/folio/211v/images/0 Accessed 10 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.”
