zacuan (FCbk11f21r)
This iconographic example, featuring a bird called the Montezuma Oropendola (zacuan), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the Nahuatl text well above the image but on the same page in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example shows a standing bird in profile facing the viewer’s right. It is a predominantly red bird with some orange, yellow, and white mixed in here and there.
Stephanie Wood
In this digital collection there are two compound hieroglyphs that incorporate zacuan feathers, and these feathers are yellow in both cases. One glyph is a name or title, and the other is a place name. They come from two different manuscripts, and so the choice of yellow does not seem to be random. From sources in our Online Nahuatl Dictionary, one learns that the zacuan may have been related to the troupial, and the latter had yellow or orange feathers. Also, zacuan feathers were used to decorate banners that were the insignia of pochteca (long-distance traders who had an imperial role) who had captured warriors.
Stephanie Wood
Çaquan
zacuan
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
pájaros, ave, aves, pluma, plumas, rojo, amarillo
zacuan, the Montezuma oropendula bird, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/zacuan
el zacuán
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 21r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/21r/images/0 Accessed 7 October 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.”
