From the migration of the Aztecs to the rise of the empire and its eventual demise, this book covers Aztec history in full, analyzing conceptions of time, religion, and more through codices to offer ...an inside look at daily life. This book focuses on two main areas: Aztec history and Aztec culture. Early chapters deal with Aztec history—the first providing a visual record of the story of the Aztec migration and search for their destined homeland of Tenochtitlan, and the second exploring how the Aztecs built their empire. Later chapters explain life in the Aztec world, focusing on Aztec conceptions of time and religion, the Aztec economy, the life cycle, and daily life. The book ends with an account of the fall of the empire, as illustrated by Aztec artists. With sections concerning a wide variety of topics—from the Aztec pantheon to war, agriculture, childhood, marriage, diet, justice, the arts, and sports, among many others—readers will gain an expansive understanding of life in the Aztec world.
Some sixty years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, a group of Nahua intellectuals in Mexico City set about compiling an extensive book of miscellanea, which was recorded in pictorial form with ...alphabetic texts in Nahuatl clarifying some imagery or adding new information altogether. This manuscript, known as the Codex Mexicanus, includes records pertaining to the Aztec and Christian calendars, European medical astrology, a genealogy of the Tenochca royal house, and an annals history of pre-conquest Tenochtitlan and early colonial Mexico City, among other topics. Though filled with intriguing information, the Mexicanus has long defied a comprehensive scholarly analysis, surely due to its disparate contents. In this pathfinding volume, Lori Boornazian Diel presents the first thorough study of the entire Codex Mexicanus that considers its varied contents in a holistic manner. She provides an authoritative reading of the Mexicanus’s contents and explains what its creation and use reveal about native reactions to and negotiations of colonial rule in Mexico City. Diel makes sense of the codex by revealing how its miscellaneous contents find counterparts in Spanish books called Reportorios de los tiempos. Based on the medieval almanac tradition, Reportorios contain vast assortments of information related to the issue of time, as does the Mexicanus. Diel masterfully demonstrates that, just as Reportorios were used as guides to living in early modern Spain, likewise the Codex Mexicanus provided its Nahua audience a guide to living in colonial New Spain.
The
(
), from Cholula ca. 1560, presents a graphic image of a dog attacking a bound indigenous priest. Certainly appalling to modern viewers, the work is often seen as an indictment against the ...Spaniards pictured. In this article, I consider this traditional interpretation and show that it is not entirely satisfactory. Though the Spaniards pictured in the
were each accused of cruelties against indigenous peoples, none of these accusations mention the spectacular dogging pictured in the
. I then provide a more nuanced reading of the imagery in the
and a consideration of its early colonial context and argue that while the work does document a clash of Spaniards versus indigenes, it also establishes a contrast between a Christian indigenous leader and his pagan countrymen. In so doing, the
communicates the culpability of the indigenous victims for their harsh punishment. By comparing this image with doggings in other pictorial sources, I show that violent images such as these communicated both the rebellious nature of the indigenous victims and the cruelties of the Spanish conquerors.
About 60 years after the Spanish invasion and conquest of Mexico, a group of Nahua intellectuals gathered in Tenochtitlan. On the very site of the heart of the Aztec empire stood a city of a new ...name: Mexico City, capital of New Spain. There the Nahuas set about compiling an extensive book of miscellanea, now known as the Codex Mexicanus. Owned by the Bibliothèque National de France, the codex includes records pertaining to the Christian and Aztec calendars, European medical astrology, a genealogy of the Tenochca royal house, and the annals of preconquest and early colonial Mexico City, among other intriguing topics.
Created in late sixteenth-century Mexico City, the Codex Mexicanus is an extensive bound book of miscellaneous contents, including a rare pictorial genealogy of the Tenochca dynastic lineage that ...traces the family line from its ancient origins to its colonial descendants. The Codex Mexicanus, as a whole, represents an attempt by its patrons and contributors to reconcile the Mexica past and the Christian present, and the inclusion of a genealogy in the larger book suggests that the Mexica royal house was believed to play an important role in this process. By providing a reading of the genealogy and comparing it with others, both native and European, I show that it presents a unique view of the Tenochca royal house that emphasizes its integrity and antiquity and in so doing effectively excludes outsiders who, at the time the codex was being created, were increasingly making claims on Mexica privileges without the proper family connections.
Divine Lineage Diel, Lori Boornazian
The Codex Mexicanus,
12/2018
Book Chapter
Spanning just two pages of the codex (pages 16–17), the Mexicanus’ genealogy is one of the few pictorial genealogies of the Mexica royal house known and is by far the most extensive (Plate 9).¹ The ...genealogy records an intricate but organized web of familial connections, imposing structure on the royal house as its generations multiplied over time. Much like any genealogy, this one is an edited record of the past, with certain family members chosen and highlighted to send a message important to the times in which the genealogy was created. Few scholars besides myself (Diel 2015) and María
