Día de los Muertos
Day of the Dead is not Mexican Halloween, it is a two-day Mexican celebration of the living and the dead, that overlaps with All Saints Day and All Souls Day. The celebration of death as a continuation of life could originate from the Aztec Lady of the Dead, Mictlancíhuatl. The days are filled with games, dance, and food at the ofrenda, oftentimes also at the cemetery where family and friends are buried. Most believe that the current tradition stems from a synthesis of Aztec and Catholic Spanish cultural traditions.
Our offering to celebrate is our facsimile edition of the Códice Zouche-Nuttall. The original codex is made of pieces of animal skins sewn in a screenfold style, likely made between the 13th and 14th centuries and currently housed in the British Museum. It details the dynastic reign of Oaxacan rulership of Tilantongo, in Mixtec logograph writing.
Our facsimile is a first edition printed in 1992 and accompanied by Crónica Mixteca: El rey 8 Venado, Garra de Jaguar, y la dinastía de Teozacualco-Zaachila, a book explaining the codex. Three scholars and organizations worked together to produce the commentary; Ferdinand Anders and Maarten Jansen with Akademische Druck-und Verlagsanstalt, Luis Reyes García with Sociedad Estatal Quinto Centenario and Fondo de Cultura Economica. The facsimile was printed in Austria while the accompanying text was printed in Mexico. Above we paired a page from the commentary with a page from the codex so that you can see how they identified each historical and mythological figure. We focused our imagery on the sacrificial scenes which are mimicked in the ofrenda’s of today!
To see our other Day of the Dead posts
To see our other facsimile posts
To see our posts on Mexican books and heritage
-Claire, Special Collections Graduate Intern