quiyahuitl (FCbk11f24r)
This iconographic example features a glyph-like representation of rain (quiyahuitl) on a page in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se, but the term for rain is found in the nearby Nahuatl text. The glyph-like painting appears in a landscape scene showing multiple hummingbirds (huitzilin). One is hanging from a tree, and the text explains how it wakes up when it rains. The rain is shown falling from a dark green cloud, in five or six short streams that each include a line of current (movement) down the middle and a droplet or bead at the end. The streams are a gray color (perhaps originally blue), but the droplets are white.
Stephanie Wood
This is an excellent example of the transition from writing to painting, where the glyph for quiyahuitl is worked into a larger scene where it no longer represents a word. The style of this rain painting is similar to others in this collection, although there are many slight variations. While the rain in this example is not part of a calendrical expression, it can be helpful to remember that rain is a day name in the tonalpohualli. In such cases, the quiyahuitl hieroglyph will often appear as just one triangular stream of water next to a numerical notation (e.g., Macuilquiyauh).
Stephanie Wood
quiiavitl
quiyahuitl
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
agua, gotas, nube, nubes
quiyahu(itl), rain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/quiyahuitl
la lluvia
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 24r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/24r/images/0 Accessed 16 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.”
