tlacatecolotl (FCbk10f21r)

This iconographic example, featuring a shape-shifting person or human-horned owl (tlacatecolotl), 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 on the same page as the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. We have extracted this anthropomorphic male figure from the scene in which he appears, so look at the contextualizing image for more information. This tlacatecolotl has the head of a pig or boar, with a long snout, mouth open, and teeth showing. He is standing, mostly in profile, facing left. He is fully clothed in a European man’s belted tunic and trousers, and he is barefooted. The clothing has gray shading to give it a three-dimensionality (also showing European influence). He is reaching forward toward a house with a sleeping man inside. Thus, this man-animal appears threatening and frightening.The text not only names him with the word that came to mean devil or demon (tlacatecolotl) in Christian doctrine, but the text states that he could turn himself into a nahualli (“mocuepani naoale,” which Anderson and Dibble translate as someone who “transforms himself, who assumes the guise of an animal”). These are obviously challenging terms to translate cross-culturally.