aztatl (FCbk11f28r)
This iconographic example, featuring a snowy egret (aztatl), 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 the egret in profile, facing toward the viewer’s right. Its left leg is raised up, and a serpent coils around it with its head reaching up toward a fish that is in the mouth of the bird. The heron is white with touches of turquoise blue where shadows might be. The three-dimensionality shows European artistic influences. The beak, legs, and feet are yellow. The claws are very apparent.
Stephanie Wood
The aztatl is well represented in this digital collection. It was a personal name, and the highly valued white feathers appear in headdresses and ritual bibs.
Stephanie Wood
Aztatl
aztatl
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
pájaro, pájaros, ave, aves, plumas, animales
azta(tl), snowy egret, white heron, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/aztatl
la garza de dedos dorados
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol.28r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/28r/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.”
