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.

Linda Schele series in Maya and pre-Columbian studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Manuscripts, Mixtec.

Mixtec Indians--History.

Mixtec Indians.

Mixtec Indians--Kings and rulers.

Mixtec language--Writing.

Mixtec language.

Picture-writing--Mexico.

Picture-writing.

Codex Nuttall.

Eight Wind, 935-1027.

Eight Wind.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (241 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

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. 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:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword

Author’s Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One

1. It Happened Long Ago

2. The People of the Codices

3. The Narrative Structure of Codex Zouche-Nuttall Obverse

4. Sacred Geography, Personified Geography

5. Caves in Mesoamerican Iconography

Part Two

6. Lord Eight Wind’s Introduction

7. The War from Heaven, Part One

8. The War from Heaven, Part Two

9. Lord Eight Wind’s Family

10. Transition to the Future

Part Three

11. Rituals of Order

12. The Problem of the Two Dead Lords

13. The Epiclassic Mixtec Ceremonial Complex

Appendix I. Biographical Sketches of Major Personnel from the Codices: Lord Eight Deer the Usurper, Lord Two Rain the King, and Lady Six Monkey of Jaltepec

Appendix II. Notes for Codex Zouche-Nuttall Pages 1–4

Appendix III. Codex Zouche-Nuttall Reverse Day Dates on Pages 46a–48a for Year 5 Reed (AD 1095) and Lord Eight Deer’s Campaign as Lord of Tututepec

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-292-79334-0

OCLC:

501181065