cuauhcalli (FCbk8f39v)
This iconographic example, featuring a wooden cage (cuauhcalli) 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 keywords chosen by the team behind the Digital Florentine Codex and is supported by the mention in the text of cuauhcalco. This example shows a cage that is just barely large enough to enclose a man while seated with his knees up. The man in question wears a cloak with folds and shadows (a three-dimensionality that came from European artistic influences). He has tears running down his visible cheek. From the context, one learns that this is a musician, perhaps a singer (cuicani), who did not perform properly before the lord, and so he was jailed and later killed. The execution must be what appears in the contextualizing image. In that case, the man is being beaten with a hefty piece of wood (cuahuitl), and blood (eztli) is spraying from his mouth.
Stephanie Wood
This is the first example (as of August 2025) of a cage or jailing in this collection. What may be examples of other punishments, some also severe, appear below. The men next to the wall had been whipped on the wall. There are also examples of strangulation, being tied to a pole, having one’s hands tied, being put in stocks, and being hanged. But those record titles in uppercase are glyphs of personal names, not actual historical events, so this should be taken under consideration. Another very bloody execution is found in what we labeled tlacamictia.
Stephanie Wood
quauhcalco
cuauhcalco
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
crimen, castigo, castigos, músicos, lágrimas, llorar, emoción, madera
cuauhcal(li), wooden cage, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cuauhcalli
la jaula de madera
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. 39v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/8/folio/39v/images/0 Accessed 23 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.”
