Lord Eight Wind of Suchixtlan and the heroes of ancient Oaxaca : reading history in the Codex Zouche-Nuttall / Robert Lloyd Williams ; foreword by F. Kent Reilly, III ; introduction by John M.D. Pohl.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Williams, Robert Lloyd.

Series:

Linda Schele series in Maya and pre-Columbian studies

The Linda Schele series in Maya and pre-Columbian studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Codex Nuttall.

Manuscripts, Mixtec.

Eight Wind, 935-1027.

Eight Wind.

Mixtec Indians--History.

Mixtec Indians.

History.

Mixtec Indians--Kings and rulers.

Mixtec language--Writing.

Mixtec language.

Picture-writing--Mexico.

Picture-writing.

Mexico.

Physical Description:

xiv, 216 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2009.

Summary:

In the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican world, histories and collections of ritual knowledge were often presented in the form of painted and folded books now known as codices, and the knowledge itself was encoded into pictographs. Eight codices have survived from the Mixtec peoples of ancient Oaxaca, Mexico; a part of one of them, the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, is the subject of this book. As a group, the Mixtec codices contain the longest detailed histories and royal genealogies known for any indigenous people in the western hemisphere. The Codex Zouche-Nuttall offers a unique window into how the Mixtecs themselves viewed their social and political cosmos without the bias of western European interpretation. At the same time, however, the complex calendrical information recorded in the Zouche-Nuttall has made it resistant to historical, chronological analysis, thereby rendering its narrative obscure.

In this pathfinding work, Robert Lloyd Williams presents a methodology for reading the Codex Zouche-Nuttall that unlocks its essentially linear historical chronology. Recognizing that the codex is a combination of history in the European sense and the timelessness of myth in the Native American sense, he brings to vivid life the history of Lord Eight Wind of Suchixtlan (AD 935-1027), a ruler with the attributes of both man and deity, as well as other heroic Oaxacan figures, including Lady Six Monkey of Jaltepec, Lord Two Rain Twenty Jaguars of Tilantongo, and Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw. Williams also provides context for the history of Lord Eight Wind through essays dealing with Mixtec ceremonial rites and social structure, drawn from information in five surviving Mixtec codices.

Contents:

Part 1

1 Happened Long Ago 29

2 The People of the Codices 45

3 The Narrative Structure of Codex Zouche-Nuttall Obverse 57

4 Sacred Geography, Personified Geography 63

5 Caves in Mesoamerican Iconography: Chalcatzingo and the Mixteca 69

Part 2

6 Lord Eight Wind's Introduction 93

7 The War from Heaven, Part One 101

8 The War from Heaven, Part Two 107

9 Lord Eight Wind's Family 115

10 Transition to the Future: Eight Wind, Two Rain, and Eight Deer 121

Part 3

11 Rituals of Order: Codices Zouche-Nuttall and Vienna 135

12 The Problem of the Two Dead Lords 146

13 The Epiclassic Mixtec Ceremonial Complex 156.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780292721210

0292721218

OCLC:

317623468