The codex was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term "codex" is now reserved for older manuscript books, which mostly used sheets of vellum, parchment, or papyrus, rather than paper.
The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Aztec culture was organized into city-states (altepetl), some of which joined to form alliances, political confederations, or empires. The Aztec Empire was a confederation of three city-states established in 1427: Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Mexica or Tenochca, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan, previously part of the Tepanec empire, whose dominant power was Azcapotzalco. Although the term Aztecs is often narrowly restricted to the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, it is also broadly used to refer to Nahua polities or peoples of central Mexico in the prehispanic era, as well as the Spanish colonial era (1521–1821). The definitions of Aztec and Aztecs have long been the topic of scholarly discussion ever since German scientist Alexander von Humboldt established its common usage in the early 19th century.
The Sinope Gospels, designated by O or 023, ε 21 (Soden), also known as the Codex Sinopensis, is a fragment of a 6th-century illuminated Greek Gospel Book. Along with the Rossano Gospels, the Sinope Gospels has been dated, on the basis of the style of the miniatures, to the mid 6th-century. The Rossano Gospels, however, are considered to be earlier. Like Rossanensis and the Vienna Genesis, the Sinope Gospels are written on purple dyed vellum.
Aztec codices are Mesoamerican manuscripts made by the pre-Columbian Aztec, and their Nahuatl-speaking descendants during the colonial period in Mexico.
Codex Boturini, also known as the Tira de la Peregrinación de los Mexica, is an Aztec codex, which depicts the migration of the Azteca, later Mexica, people from Aztlán. Its date of manufacture is unknown, but likely to have occurred before or just after the Conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521). At least two other Aztec codices have been influenced by the content and style of the Boturini Codex. This Codex has become an insignia of Mexica history and pilgrimage and is carved into a stone wall at the entrance of the National Museum of Anthropology and History in Mexico City.
Mesoamerica, along with Mesopotamia and China, is one of three known places in the world where writing is thought to have developed independently. Mesoamerican scripts deciphered to date are a combination of logographic and syllabic systems. They are often called hieroglyphs due to the iconic shapes of many of the glyphs, a pattern superficially similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs. Fifteen distinct writing systems have been identified in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, many from a single inscription. The limits of archaeological dating methods make it difficult to establish which was the earliest and hence the progenitor from which the others developed. The best documented and deciphered Mesoamerican writing system, and the most widely known, is the classic Maya script. Earlier scripts with poorer and varying levels of decipherment include the Olmec hieroglyphs, the Zapotec script, and the Isthmian script, all of which date back to the 1st millennium BC. An extensive Mesoamerican literature has been conserved, partly in indigenous scripts and partly in postconquest transcriptions in the Latin script.
The traditions of indigenous Mesoamerican literature extend back to the oldest-attested forms of early writing in the Mesoamerican region, which date from around the mid-1st millennium BCE. Many of the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica are known to have been literate societies, who produced a number of Mesoamerican writing systems of varying degrees of complexity and completeness. Mesoamerican writing systems arose independently from other writing systems in the world, and their development represents one of the very few such origins in the history of writing.
The Matrícula de Tributos is a 16th-century central Mexican manuscript on amatl paper, listing the tributes paid by the various tributaries of the Aztec Empire. The manuscript is composed of 16 pages with likely more being lost to time, measuring 42 centimeters high and 29 centimeters wide. The dating of the Matrícula has been a subject of debate as to whether it dates to pre-Columbian or early colonial times, if truly being pre-Columbian then it'd be the only surviving preconquest Aztec manuscript.
The Codex Azcatitlan is an Aztec codex detailing the history of the Mexica and their migration journey from Aztlán to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. The exact date when the codex was produced is unknown, but scholars speculate it was crafted some time between the mid-16th and 17th centuries. The name of this important Mexica pictorial manuscript was suggested by its first editor, Robert H. Barlow, who erroneously interpreted the anthill on page 2 as the glyph for “Aztlán.” In the Bibliothèque nationale de France, where it is housed, it is known as Histoire mexicaine, [Manuscrit] Mexicain 59–64.
Huitzilatzin was the first tlatoani (ruler) of the pre-Columbian altepetl of Huitzilopochco in the Valley of Mexico.
Arthur James Outram Anderson was an American anthropologist specializing in Aztec culture and translator of the Nahuatl language.
Acolhuacan or Aculhuacan was a pre-Columbian province in the east of the Valley of Mexico, inhabited by the Acolhua. Its capital was initially Coatlichan, but this settlement was eventually eclipsed in importance by Texcoco (Tetzcoco).
The Codex Laud, or Laudianus, is a sixteenth-century Mesoamerican codex named for William Laud, an English archbishop who was the former owner. It is from the Borgia Group, and is a pictorial manuscript consisting of 24 leaves from Central Mexico, dating from before the Spanish takeover. It is evidently incomplete.
The Codex Bodley is an important pictographic manuscript and example of Mixtec historiography. It was named after the colloquial name of the Bodleian Library, where it has been stored since the 17th century.
Anenecuilco is a town in the municipality of Ayala, Morelos, Mexico. As of 2021, it has a population of 11,227. Anenecuilco is known as the birthplace of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, and today the town is the home of a museum in the house of his birth.
The Codex Selden is a Mexican manuscript of Mixtec origin. The codex is an account of the genealogy of the Jaltepec dynasty from the tenth to the 16th century. Codex Selden is possibly a fragment of a much longer improperly stored document. Although it was completed after the arrival of the conquistadors in the Mixtec region, it is considered one of the six pre-Hispanic Mixtec codices that survived the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. The last date mentioned in the Codex is 1556, which can be interpreted as the date when the codex was finished.
Xicalcoliuhqui is a common motif in Mesoamerican art. It is composed of three or more steps connected to a hook or spiral, reminiscent of a "greek-key" meander. Pre-Columbian examples may be found on everything from jewelry, masks, ceramics, sculpture, textiles and featherwork to painted murals, codices and architectural elements of buildings. The motif has been in continual use from the pre-Columbian era to the present.
The Selden Roll is a 16th-century Mexican manuscript painted roll from the Coixtlahuaca region, incorporating both Mixtec and Aztec elements, probably recording myths of the origin and migration of divine ancestors.
Mesoamerican codices are manuscripts that present traits of the Mesoamerican indigenous pictoric tradition, either in content, style, or in regards to their symbolic conventions. The unambiguous presence of Mesoamerican writing systems in some of these documents is also an important, but not defining, characteristic, for Mesoamerican codices can comprise pure pictorials, native cartographies with no traces of glyphs on them, or colonial alphabetic texts with indigenous illustrations. Perhaps the best-known examples among such documents are Aztec codices, Maya codices, and Mixtec codices, but other cultures such as the Tlaxcaltec, the Purépecha, the Otomi, the Zapotecs, and the Cuicatecs, are creators of equally relevant manuscripts. The destruction of Mesoamerican civilizations resulted in only about twenty known pre-Columbian codices surviving to modern times.
The Codex Ixtlilxochitl is a pictorial Aztec Codex created between 1580 and 1584, after the arrival of the Conquistadors and during the early Spanish colonial period. It is a record of the past ceremonies and holidays observed at the Great Teocalli of the Aztec city of Texcoco, near modern-day Mexico City, and contains visual representations of rulers and deities with association to Texcoco. The existence of this codex is a demonstration of the cultural assimilations and interactions between native Aztecs, Spanish colonists, and mestizos that occurred during the 17th century in Mexico as the colonies developed and their residents, of all cultures, endeavored to find a balance between native tradition and colonial innovation. Contrasting with the attitude of colonists from the prior century of striving for a complete annihilation of all native culture, this codex served as a quasi-translator between native and European cultural languages, and denotes an occurrence of European fascination with the unknown resulting in a valuable preservation of the native cultures they had previously sought to destroy.
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