calli (FCbk11f27v)

calli (FCbk11f27v)
Iconography

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This iconographic example, featuring a building or house (calli), 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 near the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example shows a building in a three-quarter view, facing toward the viewer’s right. The building has a stone- or adobe-lined arch as a doorway. The roof has stepped crenellation of a pre-contact type. The DNC keyword team refers to this as tenamitl.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

The contextualizing image shows that a swift or a swallow had made a nest in the eaves of the building, hence the use of “ical” in the language referring to the eaves of the building (with the possessive added at the front and the absolutive dropping off the back of calli). The profile view of a calli is a pre-contact stylistic, as is the tenamitl stepped crenellation on the roof, but the curving arch and the ¾ perspective are European. So, the architecture is a mixture.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss or Text Image:

Gloss/Text Diplomatic Transcription:

ical

Gloss/Text Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Florentine/Florentinus, Codex (FC)

Date of Manuscript:

1577

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

Mexico City

Syntax:

noun(s)

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Architecture, Construction, Buildings

Cultural Content, Credit:

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors:

Shapes and Perspectives:

Other Cultural Influences:

Spanish/European

Keywords:

almena, almenas, casas, edificios, construcción, arquitectura, notched battlements, ramparts, crenelación, crestería

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

cal(li), house or building, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/calli

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

la casa, o el edificio

Spanish Translation, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Image Source:

Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 27v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/27v/images/0 Accessed 16 October 2025.

Image Source, Rights:

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.”

Historical Contextualizing Image: