The Aubin Codex is an 81-leaf Aztec codex written in alphabetic

Nahuatl Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller ...

on paper from Europe. Its textual and pictorial contents represent the history of the

Aztec The Aztecs () were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl ...

peoples who fled

Aztlán Aztlán (from nah, Astlan, ) is the ancestral home of the Aztec peoples. '' Astekah'' is the Nahuatl word for "people from Aztlan". Aztlan is mentioned in several ethnohistorical sources dating from the colonial period, and while they each cite ...

, lived during the

Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, also known as the Conquest of Mexico or the Spanish-Aztec War (1519–21), was one of the primary events in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. There are multiple 16th-century narratives of the eve ...

, and into the early Spanish colonial period, ending in 1608.

History

The first date written in the manuscript is 1576, on the frontispiece. The latest date written is 1607. It appears that various Nahuatl-speaking authors worked on it over that time. It is not known where the codex was during most of the 17th century, or indeed until Italian historian and ethnographer of the New World,

Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci Lorenzo Boturini Benaducci (also Botterini) 1698, Sondrio, Italy – 1749, Madrid) was a historian, antiquary and ethnographer of New Spain, the Spanish Empire's colonial dominions in North America. Early life Born in Italy of noble parentag ...

, added it to his collection in the mid-18th century. His collection was impounded by Spanish authorities after he was arrested in 1744 for entering New Spain without license. In the early 19th century, the codex was acquired from whereabouts unknown by , a French Americanist and collector, whose name the codex now bears. Somehow the codex ended up in the collection of a French bookseller living in London, Jules Des Portes. Des Portes sold the codex to the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It documen ...

in 1880, in amongst another 300 or so objects over the course of their commercial relationship. Aubin published a lithographic reproduction in 1893. The manuscript was hand-copied and partially translated numerous times in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; many of these copies are in collections in Europe and Mexico.

The Aubin Codex is two manuscripts, bound together as one. The first is an

annals Annals ( la, annāles, from , "year") are a concise historical record in which events are arranged chronologically, year by year, although the term is also used loosely for any historical record. Scope The nature of the distinction between ann ...

account of the

Mexica The Mexica (Nahuatl: , ;''Nahuatl Dictionary.'' (1990). Wired Humanities Project. University of Oregon. Retrieved August 29, 2012, frolink/ref> singular ) were a Nahuatl-speaking indigenous people of the Valley of Mexico who were the rulers of ...

Tenochtitlan , ; es, Tenochtitlan also known as Mexico-Tenochtitlan, ; es, México-Tenochtitlan was a large Mexican in what is now the historic center of Mexico City. The exact date of the founding of the city is unclear. The date 13 March 1325 was ...

, beginning with their migration out of Aztlan in the year 1 Flint, correlated to 1168 in the manuscript. It includes the foundation of Tenochtitlan, and the cataclysmic events of the conquest-era, including the

smallpox Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) cer ...

epidemic after the arrival of the

conquistadors Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish Empire, Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to ...

, and the massacre at the temple in Tenochtitlan in 1520. James Lockhart has published an English translation of the Codex Aubin's

account of the conquest of the Aztec Empire. According to Lockhart, internal evidence suggests that the main author was a man from the Mexico-Tenochtitlan sector of San Juan Moyotlan, who drew on existing material, including oral sources, for his account of the earlier era, and then began an eyewitness account of the events of the late sixteenth century. Unlike the account of the conquest of the Aztec Empire in the

Florentine Codex The ''Florentine Codex'' is a 16th-century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. Sahagún originally titled it: ''La Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España'' (in English: ''The ...

, which is primarily from the Tlatelocan viewpoint and denigrates the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, Codex Aubin offers the Mexica perspective and makes no reference to events in Tlatelolco.

Style

The Codex Aubin is written in mixed pictographic-alphabetic format, and a number of painters and writers worked on it. The first part of the Codex Aubin, consisting of the Mexica migration history from Aztlan to Tenochtitlan, is written in clustered annals structure. Years, represented by hieroglyphs in square cartouches, are grouped in rows or columns, these year blocks allowing more space for a longer alphabetic text. The years are written from left to right and top to bottom. The next part of the codex, covering the period after the foundation of Tenochtitlan, is written in a more conventional annals structure, with a vertical block of five years on each page, and a record of corresponding events, rendered with images and alphabetic text. From 1553 to 1591 (fol. 48v-67v), each page is devoted to the events of a single year. The last part of the codex was originally a separate manuscript, and lists the native rulers of Tenochtitlan from its founding until 1608.

Present status

Also called ''Manuscrito de 1576'' ('Manuscript of 1576'), the codex is in the British Museum in London. A copy is held at the

Princeton University Library Princeton University Library is the main library system of Princeton University. With holdings of more than 7 million books, 6 million microforms, and 48,000 linear feet of manuscripts, it is among the largest libraries in the world by number of ...

in the Robert Garrett Collection. As of 2015,

Fordham University Fordham University () is a Private university, private Jesuit universities, Jesuit research university in New York City. Established in 1841 and named after the Fordham, Bronx, Fordham neighborhood of the The Bronx, Bronx in which its origina ...

has been hosting a project to translate the codex into English and further decipher its images and

pictographs A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and gr ...

References

External links

British Museum.org: Aubin Codex
— catalogue record, Reference number AN237162001. Includes full-color digitized copy.
Codex Aubin, MSS 279 Series 9
at

L. Tom Perry Special Collections The L. Tom Perry Special Collections is the special collections department of Brigham Young University (BYU)'s Harold B. Lee Library in Provo, Utah. Founded in 1957 with 1,000 books and 50 manuscript collections, as of 2016 the Library's specia ...

Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day ...

. {{Authority control Aztec codices Nahuatl literature 1570s books 1867 books 16th-century illuminated manuscripts 1570s in Mexico Artefacts from Africa, Oceania and the Americas in the British Museum Harold B. Lee Library-related rare books articles Mexico–United Kingdom relations

History

Contents

Style

Present status

References

External links