#mesoamerican codices

[messoamerica]

Codex Humboldt Fragment 6, a Mexican pictorial manuscript comprising of one sheet. Plan of buildings with native measurements, seven people are sitting on three outer sides of the plan, talking; there are several foot prints leading into and out of the area, several buildings are on the plan.On the top left of the plan is place glyph for Oxtoticpac and written on the plan is the name “Ciudad de Tetzcuco”.

[messoamerica]

ArchaeoLit: Mesoamerican codices

Now that the semester is over and I am no longer drowning in student papers, it’s time to get back into research that might be considered a bit more fun. The Mesoamerican codex re-entangled. Production, Use, and Re-use of Precolonial Documents is the Ph.D. dissertation of Ludo Snijders at the University of Leiden. Ludo was instrumental in the writing of my MA thesis: checking my theoretical arguments, lending me books from his library, and pointing out the flaws in my research he knew my supervisor would critique. His research focuses primarily on the physicality of the codices, as evidenced by these excerpts from his abstract here below:

This work is an attempt to piece together the cultural biography of the precolonial Mesoamerican codices. It will be shown that modern technology is capable of elucidating even the earliest episodes of this biography. The less than twenty manuscripts that still exist today are all that remains of the Mesoamerican book-making tradition. Past studies of these pictographic and hieroglyphic manuscripts have focussed mostly on their content. The lack of a focus on their physical characteristics has meant that not enough is known about the production, use and re-use of these books. 

Almost all books that have survived the colonial period did so within the walls of European institutions. For many of these books it is not well known how they got there, or where they came from. For some it was even forgotten that they came from the Americas. In these institutes the books lost their meaning and the workings of the writings system were forgotten. It was only with their reproduction that they could be studied and started to regain someof their meaning. The strategies of reproduction can be considered as a new chapter in the cultural biography of these codices. The different ways of reproduction transformed the objects in fundamental ways. Inaccurate reproduction is one obvious transformation, but even photographic reproduction, with its two-dimensionality, changes the codex. A second aspect of transformation is the creation of access to these books through reproduction. Whom they are reproduced for is as important as how they are reproduced. Reproduction of these books has given more access to scholars, but has due to the costs of many of the reproductions had a limited impact on the general public. 

You may even have seen Ludo’s work in Science and other popular websites, discussing the previous writing he and his team uncovered beneath the Codex Selden. The Mesoamerican codices are clearly dear to my heart (I did write my MA thesis on them) but even if it is not your specialization, it provides a fascinating look at the transformative journey of these manuscripts over time. Check it out here for some light 200 pg. bedtime reading. 

[messoamerica]

Codex Laud / Mictlan p. 25

En estos dias viene Mictlantecuhtli, el gran Senor del Reino de la Muerte, el esqueletico, cuyo maxtlatl es rodeado por una serpiente, quen implica peligros para la sexualidad y la procreacion. El dios de la Muerte “anda punzando” - exige autosacrificios - y afecta especialmente a los brujos. Ofrendas para encerrar el tlacatenlotl, la fuerza mala, en una jaula.

Translation de Anders, F., Jansen, M. E. R. G. N., and Cruz Ortiz, A., 1994. La pintura de la muerte y de los destinos : libro explicativo del llamado Códice Laud, p. 161.