⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-06

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

xiuhtlalpilli.

Headword: 
xiuhtlalpilli.
Principal English Translation: 

a cycle of 52 years; believed to have been the period for one man's rule for each of the last eight xiuhtlalpilli prior to the fall of Tollan
See Edward John Payne, History of the New World Called America: Book II, Aboriginal America, 1892, 498.

a knotted turquoise cloth
Eloise Quiñones Keber, "An Introduction to the Images, Artists, and Physical Features of the Primeros Memoriales," in Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 94.

Attestations from sources in English: 

According to Gordon Whittaker (personal communication, 4/19/2023) says that the xiuhtlalpilli is the more authentic term that many have replaced with xiuhmolpilli.

The "xiuh" of the xiuhtlalpilli, as a period of time, refers to xihuitl, year, and the "xiuh" of the cloth refers to xihuitl, the color turquoise. (SW)

xiuhtlalpilli, inic motzinipiticac = The knotted turquoise cloth is bound around his loins.
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 94.

ytlauhtonatiuhyo yxiuhtlalpil tilmatli
Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, La corónica Mexicana (México, c. 1600. Manuscript in the Kraus Collection, Library of Congress.

See also: