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23 In prehispanic times, we know that central Mexican scribes produced screenfold books to record political histories, royal genealogies, tribute rolls, mythological lore, and texts to divine the fortunes for ceremonies and rituals surrounding a variety of mundane and religious events (e.g., Boone 2000, 2007; Sahagún, Anderson, and Dibble 1950:bks. 4, 6, 7, 8). In the early course of the Spanish Conquest, it was the policy of Spanish ecclesiastical authorities to destroy native screenfolds, most especially the divinatory books because they were regarded as repositories of prehispanic religion and belief (e.g., Durán 1971:55; Gates 1978:82). Fewer than ten of these divinatory screenfolds from central Mexico are known to still exist; six are probably pre-Conquest in date, and three were produced just after the Conquest (Boone 2000:70). The Borgia Group Codices Just before the end of the nineteenth century, Eduard Seler, a German linguist and Mesoamerican scholar, initiated the study of the iconography and almanacs contained within the extant divinatory manuscripts from central Mexico. Seler (1887) collectively called four of these pictorial manuscripts—the Codex Cospi (1994), the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (1994), the Codex Laud (Anders and Jansen 1994), and the Codex Vaticanus B. (3733) (1993)— members of the “Borgia Group” of codices because they shared stylistic, structural, and thematic attributes with the most resplendent of all of the ritual books: the Codex Borgia (1976). A sixth manuscript, the Aubin No. 20 (Goupil et al. 1891), and the reverse side of the colonial document known as the Codex Porfirio Díaz (van Doesburg2001)havesincebeenaddedtothegroup(Boone 2000:71). 2 Mexican Codices and Mythological Traditions DOI: 10.5876/9781607322214.c02 Mexican Codices and Mythological Traditions 24 It is unknown exactly how any of the five Borgia Group screenfolds now housed outside of Mexico arrived in Europe after the Conquest. Spanish conquistadors, administrators , and clerics were known to have sent treasures from the New World, including codices, back to both Spain and Italy. Certain ancient manuscripts had a more colorful history, but in general, many of the works that originally went to the king of Spain were gifted and willed to various relatives in other ruling families. Later wars helped to further disperse objects across private collections in Europe (Anders et al. 1994:21, 26). The manuscripts lay forgotten in personal libraries or museums for hundreds of years, until reproductions of several of the original screenfolds in the Borgia Group were first published in Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico (1831–1848). Joseph Florimond, Duc de Loubat, financed the publication of the first photochrome lithographic facsimiles of the core codices of the Borgia Group in the decade prior to the beginning of the twentieth century. To accompany these facsimiles, Florimond commissioned Seler to produce detailed commentaries on the iconography and calendrical content of each book (Seler 1990–2000, 1:54). As to the question of provenience, only the Aubin 20 and the Porfirio Díaz can be attributed to fairly specific regions of southern Mexico (Boone 2007:213–314). The region of origin for the Aubin 20 is believed to be the Mixteca Alta because its scribe employed numerous iconographic conventions diagnostic of the Mixtec codical tradition , including the toponyms of known towns in the Mixteca Alta used to represent the four directions and center. The Codex Porfirio Díaz reverse has been directly linked to the town of San Francisco Tututepetongo in the Cuicatec region straddling southern Puebla and northern Oaxaca (van Doesburg 2001:104–118). The five core manuscripts of the Borgia Group codices, however, lack identifiable historical, genealogical, or geographical information that would reveal their individual proveniences within the central highlands. Instead, studies of style and iconography, as well as comparisons with archaeological remains, have been the focal point for debates about possible sites of origin for each screenfold (e.g., Boone 2000; Nicholson 1966, 1982; Pohl 1998; Robertson 1966; Sisson 1983; Uruñuela et al. 1997). Boone (2007:211– 230) summarizes this body of evidence and the scholarly consensus to date about the likely proveniences for the individual codices in the Borgia Group. The Borgia and Cospi codices likely came from the Puebla-Tlaxcala region. The Laud and FejérváryMayercodiceshavestylistictiestotheTabascoareaoftheGulfCoast ,andtheVaticanus B. screenfold may have come from the same area of the Mixteca Alta as the Aubin 20. All seven of the Borgia Group codices are made of one or more strips of deerskin pasted and/or sewn together to make a long single sheet. The sides of the...

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