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During the period of Aztec expansion and empire (ca. 1325–1525), scribes of high social standing used a pictographic writing system to paint hundreds of manuscripts detailing myriad aspects of life, including historical, calendric, and religious information. Following the Spanish conquest, native and mestizo tlacuiloque (artist-scribes) of the sixteenth century continued to use pre-Hispanic pictorial writing systems to record information about native culture. Three of these manuscripts—Codex Boturini, Codex Azcatitlan, and Codex Aubin—document the origin and migration of the Mexica people, one of several indigenous groups often collectively referred to as “Aztec.” In Portraying the...
The Voynich Codex is one the most fascinating and bizarre manuscripts in the world. The manuscript (potentially equivalent to 232 pages), or more properly a codex, consists of many foldout pages. It has been divided by previous researchers into sections known as Herbal/Botanical/Pharmacology; Balenological/Biological; Cosmology; one page known as The Rosette; and a final Recipe section. All the sections contain text in an unknown writing system, yet to be deciphered. Cryptological analyses by modern computer programs nevertheless have determined that the language is real and not a hoax, as has been suggested by some. Despite the fact that this codex is largely an herbal, the interpreters of ...
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Around 1542, descendants of the Aztec rulers of Mexico created accounts of the pre-Hispanic history of the city of Tetzcoco, Mexico, one of the imperial capitals of the Aztec Empire. Painted in iconic script ("picture writing"), the Codex Xolotl, the Quinatzin Map, and the Tlohtzin Map appear to retain and emphasize both pre-Hispanic content and also pre-Hispanic form, despite being produced almost a generation after the Aztecs surrendered to Hernán Cortés in 1521. Yet, as this pioneering study makes plain, the reality is far more complex. Eduardo de J. Douglas offers a detailed critical analysis and historical contextualization of the manuscripts to argue that colonial economic, political...
First republication of remarkable repainting of great Mexican codex, dated to ca. AD 1400. 76 large full-color plates show gods, kings, warriors, mythical creatures, and abstract designs. Introduction.
The Aztecs and Mixtecs of ancient Mexico recorded their histories pictorially in images painted on hide, paper, and cloth. The tradition of painting history continued even after the Spanish Conquest, as the Spaniards accepted the pictorial histories as valid records of the past. Five Pre-Columbian and some 150 early colonial painted histories survive today. This copiously illustrated book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the Mexican painted history as an intellectual, documentary, and pictorial genre. Elizabeth Hill Boone explores how the Mexican historians conceptualized and painted their past and introduces the major pictorial records: the Aztec annals and cartographic histories ...
An interdisciplinary study investigating how the name and portrait of Moteuczoma (a.k.a. Moctezuma/Montezuma) II were represented in Aztec monuments and colonial manuscripts and how the concept of fame operated in the Aztec world.
"In this magnificently illustrated work with a facsimile reproduction of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, Eloise Quiones Keber has presented an invaluable first-time publication of the entire codex along with an extensive scholarly commentary, sixteenth-century Spanish annotations, and an English translation of its texts.... This volume is highly recommended as an important acquisition for any research library on colonial Mexican history." —Colonial Latin American Historical Review As one of the finest surviving examples of the art of Aztec manuscript painting, the Codex Telleriano-Remensis provides invaluable information about the core of Aztec culture. In this landmark publication, Eloise ...
Excerpt from The Delineation of the Day-Signs in the Aztec Manuscripts Calendar symbols of one sort or another occur on a surprising variety of monuments, both of early and late periods. The most important of these monuments for the study of the workings of the calendar system in detail are certain remarkable picture books or manuscripts, made on folded strips of deerskin, or on paper made of the fibre of the maguey (agave americana). These manuscripts are usually spoken of as codices. Only a few of these native manuscripts survived the introduction of European civilization into America. Those which were pre served were taken to Europe as curiosities, and often preserved through mere luck. T...