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8. Provenience
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8 Provenience The geographic and ethnic origins of the surviving divinatory codices, especially those of the Borgia Group, have occasioned much debate. There is little solid evidence about the acquisition and early history of the codices to help determine their provenience. Despite attempts by over a dozen scholars in the last 100 years, only a few of the manuscripts can securely be assigned to specific locations. We can, however, reach a general sense of their origins by considering the styles in which they are painted, the individual deities and objects that appear in the manuscripts, the pictorial conventions the painters used, and the possible appearance of verbal metaphors (Fig. 120). The existing divinatory codices divide themselves fairly neatly into two traditions: those of the Aztec or Nahuatl realm and those of the Borgia Group. What distinguishes these traditions is not so much their mantic content and iconography—which is largely shared —but their physical appearance, painting style, and graphic preferences. The ‘‘Aztec’’ codices are immediately recognizable because their day signs are conceptualized and painted in the same manner as are day signs carved on monumental Aztec sculpture in the valley of Mexico (for example , on the Calendar Stone), and they almost always include the day’s numerical coefficient as well as its sign. Most of these books also present very similar versions of the tonalamatl divided into the twenty trecenas. The less acculturated codices, those painted fully in the indigenous style, are made of native bark paper. In contrast, all the Borgia Group codices are made of hide. They use day signs that are much more similar to those in the Mixtec codices, and they usually give these day signs without their coefficients. Most of the Borgia Group books contain many different almanacs involving both the 20-day cycle and the larger 260-day cycle.They also make use of spacers to stand in for days whose signs are not pictured. Manuscripts in the Aztec Tradition The Aztec codices are the Codex Borbonicus, Tonalamatl Aubin, Codex Telleriano-Remensis (as well as its copy, the Codex Vaticanus A/Ríos), and Codex Tudela. The Borbonicus and Tonalamatl Aubin are both painted almost entirely in the preconquest style, although Robertson (1959:86–93) and others have argued for their early colonial dates.1 The TellerianoRemensis ,Vaticanus A/Ríos, and Tudela contain colonial copies of earlier tonalamatls. 212 p r o v e n i e n c e Fig. 120. Map of central Mexico, showing the general region where the divinatory codices originated. Drawing by Heather Hurst. Codex Borbonicus The Borbonicus (Fig. 46, Plate 1) was usually assumed to have been painted in TenochtitlanTlatelolco (Robertson 1959:87; Krickeberg 1961:193; Caso 1962:104, 1967:43–45; Glass 1975a:97) because its style and iconography are so similar to representations from the Aztec Mexica capital and because its depictions of the veinteina feasts generally agree with the pictorial and textual accounts for Tenochtitlan and its immediate environs; also, Moctezuma is mentioned in a gloss in the third section (p. 23). Nicholson (1988), however, has made a compelling argument for an origin in the southern lake region (Ixtapalapan or Culhuacan ), based on the content of the veinteina section, which emphasizes the goddess Cihuacoatl (patron of Culhuacan), the feast of Ochpaniztli over Panquetzaliztli , and the New Fire ceremony. He notes that the veinteina section thus focuses on the gods and feasts relevant to the southern lake region rather than on Huitzilopochtli and his feasts, which would be expected to dominate in Tenochtitlan. Tonalamatl Aubin The Tonalamatl Aubin can be placed fairly securely in the eastern, Otomi-speaking region of Tlaxcala (Fig. 47). As Nicholson (1963:42– 44, 1967:81–82) has noted, the López inventory (1745) of the Boturini collection, which included the Tonala- [3.239.57.87] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:23 GMT) p r o v e n i e n c e 213 matl Aubin, assigns it to Tlaxcala;2 and the manuscript is very similar in style to the Codex Huamantla, which is documented as being from Huamantla. Recognizing that the Tonalamatl Aubin and Codex Huamantla are both crudely drawn and painted and are dissimilar to other Tlaxcalan pictorials (e.g., Lienzo de Tlaxcala), Nicholson (1967:81–82) has speculated that they may represent a tradition centered in the eastern Otomi-speaking zone, ‘‘which was somewhat divergent from the rest of the province.’’ If so, this region should include Nahua-speaking Tepeticpac (near...