cuauhilacatzoa (FCbk8f19v)
This iconographic example, featuring log juggling with the feet (cuauhilacatzoa) 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 text on the same page as the image, albeit given in the preterit plural form. This example shows a man on his back with his legs raised. On his dark-brown feet, balances a log of about three times his body’s width. It is colored terracotta. Presumably, he is juggling and balancing it. According to the text, his job was to entertain the ruler. The contextualizing image shows two musicians playing near him. One has a slit drum and one has a small drum he strikes with his hand. The team at the Digital Florentine Codex have keyworded these percussion instruments as a teponaztli and a huehuetl. They are both small in comparison with other examples. All these men have quetzal feather headdresses, multicolored striped cloaks, turquoise loincloths, and the musicians have ankle ornamentations.
Stephanie Wood
A much earlier drawing or painting of this practice being called cuauhilacatzoa, being demonstrated at the Spanish royal court in 1529, was published by Christoph Weiditz in Nuremberg, Germany, as shown in Dana Leibsohn and Barbara Mundy, Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520–1820 (2005). In The Aztec Myths (2024), Camilla Townsend reproduces another drawing by Weiditz of some Nahuas demonstrating the ball game at the same time (p. 165).
Stephanie Wood
quauilacatzoque
cuauhilacatzoque
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
madera, palos, troncos, entretenimiento, malabarismo
cuauhilacatzoa, to juggle a log with one’s feet, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cuauhilacatzoa
voltear con los pies un palo rollizo (fuente: Alonso de Molina), o equilibrar un tronco sobre los pies mientras el malabarista está acostado
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. 19v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/8/folio/19v/images/f3843c90-31... Accessed 8 August 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.”
