tlatlacoti (FCbk9f34v)
This iconographic example, featuring two enslaved people (tlacotli, singular, tlatlacoti or perhaps tlatlacotin, plural) and their merchant owners, in a moment prior to the execution of the captives, is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the text near the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example shows one enslaved person in a ¾ view, semi-reclined, naked except for his loincloth, the wooden yoke around his neck, and the handcuffs that encircle his crossed wrists. The other enslaved person wears a white cloak (so from a somewhat higher social status) tied over his left shoulder. The folds in the fabric are painted purple, showing folds and a three-dimensionality. This man has the same type of yoke on his neck, but this one has a rope tied to it, and the rope is being held in the hand of one of the merchants, restraining the ill-fated person.
Stephanie Wood
Tlacotli (enslaved person) sounds much like tlacotl (stick), and perhaps the words share some semantic meaning, given the wood used in the yoke. In some cases, two or more straight sticks are attached to the curving part that goes around the back of the neck. The yoke, in its various representations, is emblematic of slavery, but it is sometimes employed for the personal name Tlaco (a birth-order name) as a phonetic indicator, with no semantic reading whatsoever.
Stephanie Wood
tlatlacoti
perhaps: tlatlacotin
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
esclava, esclavo, esclavas, esclavos, yugo, yugos, palos, palos, atados
tlaco(tli), an enslaved person, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlacotli
las personas esclavizadas
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 9: The Merchants", fol. 34v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/9/folio/34v/images/0 Accessed 30 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.”
