In one such book, the Codex Nuttall, a "folding screen" text from the Mixtec region south of Mexico City (dated about a. d. 1200), time literally flows like a wave across the folded-out pages of text (figure 7.1). The scene depicts a group of aristocratic individuals who probably represent the ancestors of local rulers. Like the heroes of the Popul Vuh (in the Maya ceramic plate on page 166), each figure, labeled by his or her calendar name, proceeds from one event to the next in a sinuous journey across the pages of time. Begin at the top right, where the two seated personages—the man, 6 Crocodile (right) and the woman, 9 Eagle (left)—point their fingers at one another. Allying himself with the forces of nature, the man wears the headdress of Tlaloc, the rain god, and has a sun disk perched on his back. The vague-year date of the event being described, probably their marriage, is 6 Flint, which appears above the figure; and the date in the 260-day cycle is 7 Eagle, shown in the middle of the blue background between them. Below are
FIGURE 7.1 Time takes its bends and turns as it flows from right to left in this quasi-mythic history book about the genealogical descent of a Mixtec dynasty that ruled highland Mexico before the Conquest. Source: "Codex
Their three children, also named according to their days of birth in the 13-times-20 count. As you move down and turn to the left in time, the next event is recounted below the red boundary line. Enter the lady 11 Water. She is the second wife of 5 Crocodile, whom he married 17 years later. If we slide back upward again, we find in chronological order the three offspring of the second couple. Follow the spaces between the partitions (passing downward), and you will come to the next event—another marriage, this one between the man 8 Deer and the lady 13 Serpent. She offers him a ceremonial cup of chocolate to seal the pact. On and on the text of lineage events goes, most of it about as interesting to us as reading someone's family tree; but this time-embedded genealogical history served the purpose of establishing both continuity and depth in time to the noble class—for a sound ruler could not portray himself as just a latter-day conqueror who burst upon the scene exhibiting no familiarity with the local culture.
Still other Central Mexican texts, again like some of the Maya
Nuttall, facsimile of an Ancient Mexican Codex Belonging to Lord Zouche of Harynworth, Cambridge, England." Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, 1902. Courtesy, Peabody Museum, Harvard University.
Books, seem to have been intended exclusively for the use of priestly specialists: these holy instruction manuals detailed exactly how to carry out worship and celebrate the feasts in the various temples. Each temple in the pantheistic Mexican religion represented the center of worship of one of a vast number of cults, each housed by a tutelary or protective god; and each such god was a guardian of some form of power that emanated from the natural order: Tlaloc for rain and water; Huitzilopochtli, the sun and war; Coatlicue, the earth and fertility. Each god had its own temple and a unique set of specialized cultic practices that the expert priest needed to master down to the finest detail.
The illustrations in some of these codices touch the extremes of human imagination. Take the page of the Borgia Codex, reproduced in figure 7.2, which pertains to secrets of the cult of the earth. Once hidden away in the temple, and intended to be consulted only by the priests who served as specialists of this particular cult, it graphically
FIGURE 7.2 A dynamic universe. The opening of the ceremonial bundle in the Codex Borgia reveals a living earth from which plants, animals, and spirits emanate almost electrically. This sacred book served as a priestly guide to ritual procedures for one of the highly specialized cubic temples. It was never intended for any other human eyes. Source: Codex Borgia. Codices Selecti, vol. XXXIV (Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1976).
Depicts the opening of the ceremonial bundle, a device still carried by some shamans. Once the ceremonial bag is unleashed, out springs every conceivable aspect of earthly power: little deity snakes with two heads (some smoking), spiders, and stone knives. Here is a cult that strove to articulate the behavior of real natural beings, not abstract natural laws. The earth explodes with life, and you can feel the electrical discharge as you peer into the ceremonial bag and momentarily glimpse nature's forces. Other pages in the Borgia sequence dutifully
Give the omens assigned to the different days of the divinatory calendar.
The godly statuary of the Aztec pantheon, which stood in the cul-tic temples, were called teotl (the Spanish translated them as gods or devils); they, too, were not mere representations of nature's forces. As the art historian Richard Townsend characterizes them, the Aztec gods are forces that appear in various forms diffused throughout the universe:
This force was pre-eminently manifested in the natural forces—earth, air, fire and water—but was also to be found in persons of great distinction, of things and places of unusual or mysterious configuration. Teotl expresses the notion of sacred quality, but with the idea that it could be physically manifested in some specific presence—a rainstorm, a mirage, a lake, or a majestic mountain. It was as if the world was perceived as being magically charged, inherently alive in greater or lesser degree with this vital force.®
When one of these sacred manifestations or hierophanies took place, it was regarded with great seriousness, and much meaning was attached to it. Like the miracles of the burning bush of the Old Testament, or the healing of the leper in the New Testament, these are not occurrences to be explained away through scientific rationalization— the way we tend to deal with the Bible stories today. For the Aztecs, the wonders of nature were the actions of animate entities who roamed a universe that was vibrantly alive and filled with purpose, a universe we cannot imagine today because we have drastically altered our definition of both what is animate and what is purposeful. We must stretch far to appreciate the way an Aztec priest or citizen knew the natural surroundings.
In many cases in Central Mexico—and this is particularly true among the Aztecs—there were festivals to commemorate each of the 18 months of the seasonal calendar. There were feasts for the dead, for the god of war, for the sun and rain gods, for floral deities, even for the gods of intoxicating beverages. Descriptions of the ceremonies that took place on these occasions come from the Spanish glosses written over the Codex. These show how deeply ingrained agrarian fertility concepts had become in the minds of the people. Take, for example, the feast of the corn god celebrated in the month of Hueytozoztli, which begins at the end of April. At this time, in every one of the tern-
Pies dedicated to the corn god Cinteotl, worshipers made offerings of cornstalks and leaves, as well as prepared products from the plant, such as tamales and tortillas.
A couple of months later, in the month of Etzalqualiztli, Tlaloc was honored and all activities shifted to his temples. To each of his holy places they brought white and green mats woven out of reeds that grew in the lake. One chronicler listed several Tlaloc shrines among the 76 temples in and about the ceremonial precinct of ancient Tenochtitlan. And so, the tribute list continued through all 18 of the 20-day months of the year.
World History
