Codex Borgia

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Quetzalcoatl in human form, using the symbols of Ehecatl, from the Codex Borgia.
Quetzalcoatl in human form, using the symbols of Ehecatl, from the Codex Borgia.

Codex Borgia is a Mesoamerican ritual and divinatory manuscript. It is generally believed to have been written before the Spanish conquest of Mexico, somewhere within what is now today southern or western Puebla.

The Codex Borgia is made of animal skins folded into 39 sheets. Each sheet measures 27 cm by 27 cm, for a total length of nearly 11 meters (35 feet). All but the end sheets are painted on both sides, providing 76 pages. The codex is read from right to left.

The codex is named after the Italian Cardinal Stefano Borgia, who owned it before it was acquired by the Vatican Library. In 2004 Maarten Jansen and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez proposed that it be given the indigenous name Codex Yoalli Ehecatl, Nahuatl for "Night and Wind", although it is not certain that its creators were Nahuas.[1]

Contents

[edit] Descriptions

  • The first section of the codex is a tonalamatl ("pages of days") and is based on the sacred 260-day calendar of Mesoamerica which in Nahuatl is termed tonalpohualli. The first 4 pairs of pages shows 65 day signs running horizontally through the middle of the pages, flanked by deity and other supernaturnal paintings.
  • Pages 29 through 46 of the codex constitute the longest section of the codex, and the most enigmatic. They apparently show a journey but the complex iconography and the lack of any comparable document have led to a variety of interpretations ranging from an account of actual historical events, to the passage of Quetzalcoatl -- as a personification of Venus[citation needed] -- through the underworld, to a "cosmic narrative of creation". The sequence apparently ends with a New Fire ceremony, marking the end of one 52-year cycle, and the start of another.
  • Pages 47 through 56 show a variety of deities, sacrifices, and other complex iconography.
  • Pages 57 through 60 allowed the priest to determine the prospects for favorable and unfavorable marriages according to the numbers within the couple’s names.
  • Pages 61 through 70 are similar to the first section, showing various day signs winding around scenes of deities. Each of the 10 pages shows 26 day signs.
  • Pages 71 through 76 show various deities and directional iconography.

[edit] The Borgia Group

A number of other codices have been grouped with Codex Borgia based on several similarities:

Codex Vaticanus B (Apostolic Library, the Vatican.)
Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (Merseyside County Museum, Liverpool)
Codex Laud (Bodleian Library, Oxford University)
Codex Cospi (Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna)

Also, the one page fragment known as Codex Fonds Mexicanus 20, now in the Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris, is often categorized as a member of the Borgia Group.

[edit] History

The Codex Borgia was brought to Europe, likely Italy, some time in the early Spanish Colonial period. It was discovered in 1805 by Alexander von Humboldt among the effects of Cardinal Stefano Borgia. The Codex Borgia is presently housed in the Apostolic Library, the Vatican.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Jansen and Jiménez: p. 270.

[edit] References

  • Boone, Elizabeth Hill. Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate. Austin: University of Texas Press. 
  • Dia, Gisele; Rodgers, Alan (1993). The Codex Borgia. New York: Dover Publications. 
  • Jansen, Maarten; Jiménez, Gabina Aurora Pérez (2004). "Renaming the Mexican Codices". Ancient Mesoamerica 15 (2): 267–271. 
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