ayatl (FCbk10f53r)

This iconographic example, featuring a cloak or blanket made of coarse fiber (ayatl), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from text near the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example shows a woman holding a white, rectangular cloth by its top two corners. In the contextualizing image, a potential buyer on her right is a man wearing a cloak. The seller of ayatl is an ayanamacac, which also appears in the Nahuatl text. Both the cloth and the woman’s clothing have shading, which shows a European artistic influence. This is true, too, of the blue sky at the top and the green ground at the bottom of the “scene,” which also involve European influences. With regard to another matter, Anderson and Dibble use male pronouns, but the seller is clearly a woman. The description of the “capes” explains that they can be thick or thin, tight or loosely woven. Nettles and flowers can be woven into these cloths.