The Madrid Codex
New Approaches to Understanding an Ancient Maya Manuscript
Publication Year: 2009
This volume offers new calendrical models and methodologies for reading, dating, and interpreting the general significance of the Madrid Codex. The longest of the surviving Maya codices, this manuscript includes texts and images painted by scribes conversant in Maya hieroglyphic writing, a written means of communication practiced by Maya elites from the second to the fifteenth centuries A.D. Some scholars have recently argued that the Madrid Codex originated in the Petén region of Guatemala and postdates European contact. The contributors to this volume challenge that view by demonstrating convincingly that it originated in northern Yucatán and was painted in the Pre-Columbian era. In addition, several contributors reveal provocative connections among the Madrid and Borgia group of codices from Central Mexico.
Published by: University Press of Colorado
Contents
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pp. vii-viii
Illustrations
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pp. ix-xvi
Foreword
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pp. xvii-xviii
The publication of this excellent and innovative study of the Madrid Codex revitalizes both our Mesoamerican Worlds series and the decipherment of the Maya pictorial tradition. Focusing on a single indigenous manuscript, Vailand Aveni and their colleagues bring the Maya people and their world view and ritual actions to life in original ways. An interdisciplinary methodological...
Preface
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pp. ixx-xxi
This collection of papers stems from a series of presentations and discussions at two workshops on the Madrid Codex held at Tulane University, the first co-organized by Gabrielle Vail and Victoria R. Bricker (June 22-24, 2001) and the second by Gabrielle Vail and Anthony Aveni (February 28-March 2, 2002). The theme of the two sessions was "Issues in the Provenience and Dating of the Madrid Codex"...
Acknowledgments
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pp. xxiii-xxiv
We would like to thank Dr. Thomas Reese, Director of the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University, for providing the funds to support the June 2001 workshop and the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Provost's Office of Tulane University for support of the second conference as part of Anthony Aveni's appointment as Mellon Professor in the Humanities...
Contributors
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pp. xxv-xxvi
Abbreviations
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pp. xxvii-
Chapter 1: Research Methodologies and New Approaches to Interpreting the Madrid Codex
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pp. 1-30
Progress in scholarly endeavor often comes in spurts. Unexpected revolutionary breakthroughs are followed by long periods of what historian of science T.S. Kuhn calls "normal science,"� in which the community of investigators rallies around a new paradigm, applies it, and tests it out, each according to his or her particular purview-until another breakthrough occurs. Such has been...
Part 1: Provenience and Dating ofthe Madrid Codex
Chapter 2: The Paper Patch on Page 56 ofthe Madrid Codex
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pp. 33-56
Several years ago, Michael Coe suggested that the substrate of the Madrid Codex consisted in part of an amalgam or sandwich of indigenous bark paper and European paper (Coe and Kerr 1998:181-182). The pages Coe identified as composed in part of European paper are the outside, or cover, pages of the codex in its present form-pages M. 1 (and M. 57 on the other side of it) and...
Chapter 3: Papal Bulls, Extirpators, and the Madrid Codex
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pp. 57-88
Mystery and controversy have shrouded the origins of many fascinating documents throughout human history. The hieroglyphic Maya text known as the Madrid Codex is one such document. Initially believed to be two separate manuscripts, Leon de Rosny proved in 1880 (de Rosny 1882) that the two documents known as the codices Troano and Cortesianus belonged to the same...
Chapter 4: Tayasal Origin of the Madrid Codex
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pp. 89-127
There are three surviving fragments of prehispanic Maya books, or codices,whose authenticity is not subject to question.1 Named for the cities where they currently reside, the Dresden, Paris, and Madrid codices consist of screenfolded pages with illustrated hieroglyphic texts; the most extensive of these is the Madrid Codex (Codex Tro-Cortesianus). Each of the codices provides fundamental information...
Part 2: Calendrical Models and Methodologies for Examining the Madrid Almanacs
Chapter 5: Maya Calendars and Dates
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pp. 131-146
Some of the earliest advances in decipherment were made in terms of interpreting dates recorded in Maya texts. Like other Mesoamerican cultures, the Maya used several independent but overlapping calendars to track time. The first, which is based on a 260-day repeating cycle known as the tzolk'in, functioned primarily as a mechanism for divination and prophecy. A second calendar...
Chapter 6: Intervallic Structure and Cognate Almanacs in the Madrid and Dresden Codices
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pp. 147-170
Numbers are everywhere in the Maya codices: red numbers to mark dates, black numbers that signify temporal distances between them, but then numbers were ubiquitous in the Maya world; there are glyphs for numbers, both head variant and full figure. Numbers dominate texts on stelae, they appear on carved lintels, and they are painted on ceramics. Clearly, numbers were...
Chapter 7: Haab Dates in the Madrid Codex
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pp. 171-214
In contrast to the Dresden Codex, which contains a series of astronomical tables that include dates in the 52-year Calendar Round as well as the Long Countcalendar, the Madrid Codex is generally believed to be almost entirely lacking in references to any cycles of time larger than 260 days. Except for one Calendar Round date occurring on page 73b (V. Bricker 1997a; Kelley 1980), researchers...
Chapter 8: A Reinterpretation of Tzolk’in Almanacs in the Madrid Codex
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pp. 215-252
Both the Maya codices and Spanish colonial sources provide compelling evidence that haab' ceremonies were extremely important in the ritual life of the prehispanic Maya.1 Bishop Diego de Landa (in Tozzer 1941:133-167), writing in the 1560s, devoted over 30 pages of his Relacion to a description of the festivals associated with each of the 18 months of the haab', as well as the rituals...
Part 3: Connections Among the Madrid and Borgia Group Codices
Chapter 9: In Extenso Almanacs in the Madrid Codex
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pp. 255-276
The Madrid Codex is known to be an eclectic compilation of astronomical, seasonal, ritual, and calendrical information drawn from various sources across time and space.1 Recent research has specified temporally the relevance of portions of the manuscript, suggesting that the Madrid's almanacs referenceat least 500 years of astronomical data (cf. H. Bricker, V. Bricker, and Wulfing...
Chapter 10: The Inauguration of Planting in the Borgia and Madrid Codices
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pp. 277-320
Just prior to the arrival of the Spanish in the early 1500s, the Aztec in highland central Mexico and the Maya of northern Yucatan were, like all Mesoamerican civilizations, populous agricultural societies that relied upon a triad of maize, beans, and squash for their subsistence. Mesoamerica enjoys a subtropical climate with marked wet and dry seasons. Although two or perhaps three crops...
Chapter 11: “Yearbearer Pages” and Their Connection to Planting Almanacs in the Borgia Codex
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pp. 321-364
In an earlier study of the Borgia Codex (Hernandez 2003), I argue that Aveni's (1999) correlation of the starting day of the almanac on page 27 (year 1 Reed 1 Crocodile) with a Venus elast event on April 4, 1467 (Gregorian) aligns the rain god and maize iconography on the page with the anticipated start of the rains and the inauguration of planting activities in highland central Mexico. The...
Part 5: Overview: The Madrid Codex in the Context of Mesoamerican Traditions
Chapter 12: Screenfold Manuscripts of Highland Mexico and Their Possible Influence on Codex Madrid
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pp. 367-413
I have spent many years considering how the screenfold manuscripts we call codices can be analyzed within broader cultural frameworks through interdisciplinary study, and I continue to look for ways to transcend the limitations of single viewpoints rooted in archaeology, art history, religious studies, or any of the other specializations fostered by our department-based institutions. I...
Index
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pp. 415-426
E-ISBN-13: 9780870818615
E-ISBN-10: 0870818619
Print-ISBN-13: 9780870819391
Print-ISBN-10: 0870819399
Page Count: 456
Illustrations: 15 b&w photographs, 66 line drawings, 6 maps
Publication Year: 2009
Series Title: Mesoamerican Worlds Series
Series Editor Byline: DavÃd Carrasco, Harvard University, and Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, El Colegio Nacional, Mexico, Series General Editors
