See an image that represents teponaztli in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).
Qujcujcatiaia, yn iveveiooan, qujteponacilhujaia, caiotzotzonjlia, caioujtequjlia, caiacachilhuja, comjchicaoacilhuja. = Her old men sang for her; they beat the two-toned wooden drum, and the turtle-shell drum; they rattled rattles shaped like dried poppy-seed pods, and they rattled bone rattles. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 1 -- The Gods; No. 14, Part 2, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1950), 5.
quitzonaya yn tepo naz tlí- Yhuá cololí; cuauh coyolím, yhuá hoccequine Yaotlatquítl ycamiec tzatziliztli, tla huelecayo tíca cayȗh, Ozelomê mimiztín = quitzonaya in tepona:ztli i:hua:n cololi, cuauhcoyolin, i:hua:n oc cequi:ne ya:o:tlatquitl i:ca miec tzahtziliztli, tlahue:lehcayo:tica ca iuh o:celo: meh, mimi:ztin = they beat the lateral log drum and trumpets, wooden bells, along with other war property, with much furious shouting, like coyotes, jaguars, and mountain lions.
Anónimo mexicano, ed. Richley H. Crapo and Bonnie Glass-Coffin (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2005), 39.
teponaztli = drum all of wood (Atenango, between Mexico City and Acapulco, 1629)
Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions That Today Live Among the Indians Native to This New Spain, 1629, eds. and transl. J. Richard Andrews and Ross Hassig (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984), 53.
in anoço teponaztli in anoço vevetl = log drums, or cylindrical drums
(Mexico City, sixteenth century)
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 186.
tepunaztli tetzilacatl = horizontal drums; small bells
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 210.
chalchiuhteponaztli, nacatica cuitlalpitoc... tla ca nenca nacochtli. = a two-tone drum of jade ringed with flesh?...it is an ear-plug.
Thelma D. Sullivan, "Nahuatl Proverbs, Conundrums, and Metaphors, Collected by Sahagún," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 4 (1963), 130–131.
In the Toluca Valley in the early seventeenth-century, ritual specialists were found to have been performing ritual songs "to the beat of the wooden drums known as teponaztli, and uttered 'unintelligible words.'"
David Tavárez, The Invisible War: Indigenous Devotions, Discipline, and Dissent in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 72.