Mazatl (FCbk8f9r)
This simplex glyph for the personal name Mazatl (or, here, Mazatzin, in the reverential) shows the head of a deer in profile, facing right. It has a mottled coat painted brown and white antlers. The contextualizing image shows this ruler has a colorful feather headdress, an animal hide cape tied at the neck, and a white loincloth waist band that can be seen on his back side. The companion text of the manuscript mentions that this man was a lord (tecuhtli). The bow and arrow he holds indicates that he was a Chichimeca. He also sits on a bundle of brown sticks (something like a tolicpalli or acacpalli) instead of a woven seat (icpalli).
Stephanie Wood
He was a lord (tecuhtli) and a Chichimeca, but it is not clear that he had the full title, “Chichimeca Tecuhtli” (“Lord of the Chichimecs”), which is a title that can be found across many manuscripts. Mazatl was a day name from the tonalpohualli, the 260-day religious divinatory calendar. Normally, this name would have had a number with it. See some other examples below. One of the deer in the Codex Mendoza has the antlers of the deer painted a turquoise blue.
Stephanie Wood
maçatzin tecutli
Mazatzin tecuhtli
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
Mazatzin, animales, venado, cornamenta, gobernante, gobernantes, gobernador, gobernadores, tecuhtli, lord, lords, señor, señores, Chichimecas, nombres de hombres, nombres famosos
maza(tl), a deer, also a personal name, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/mazatl
(un gobernador de Huejutla; “Venado”)
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 8: Kings and Lords", fol. 9r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/8/folio/9r/images/c3d6087f-5e1... Accessed 26 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.”
