Add MS 39671

PARHAM MS. LXXXIX. MEXICAN Picture-writing: the Zouche Codex, published in facsimile by the Peabody Museum of American Archæaology, Harvard Univ., Cambridge, Mass., 1902, under the title Codex Nuttall, with an introduction by Zelia Nuttall. Executed before 1519. The paintings are on deer-skin, fourteen skins being attached together by means of an adhesive paste, the whole measuring 37 ft. 6 in. x 7 1/4 in. The whole skin is then folded in the common screen-like form, the closed book measuring 7 1/4 in. x 9 1/2 in. The surface is prepared for painting with a white priming, on which the subjects are drawn with a black outline and filled in with colour. There is a marked difference in style, arrangement, scale of figures and scheme of colour between the two sides. The paintings on the recto (pp. 1-42) are to be read from right to left, the cover being lifted towards the right; starting from the same cover (reversed) in the same way the paintings on the verso (pp. 47-90) also read from right to left. At the end of both recto and verso are respectively four and two prepared pages blank except for later writing on pp. 44, 92. The work may have been unfinished, as is suggested also by the failure to fill in some of the black outlines with colour (cf. pp. 54, 69). Some of the designs are drawn upon cancels. The subject treated appears to be in the main historical. J. Cooper Clarke in The Story of " Eight Deer " in Codex Colombino, 1912, compares six codices : the present one, the Vienna Codex (facsimiled in Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, ii), Bodley 2858 (ib., i), Selden 3135 (ib.), Codex Colombino (Antigüedades Mexicanas, Junta Colombina de Mexico, 1892) and the Becker Codex (Le manuscript du Cacique, facs. H. de Saussure, Antiquités Mexicaines, 1891). All these contain references to events in the life of a warrior indicated by the date-sign " eight deer " and the glyph of an ocelot's claw. The Codex Colombino and the Becker Codex (which come from the state of Puebla, and are held by some to be portions of one codex) appear to contains glosses in the Zapotecan language not represented in the facsimiles (cf. Cooper Clarke, p. 6). A few glosses in a 16th cent. hand in the present codex are in Nahuatl, Spanish and Italian. Cooper Clarke conjectures the warrior to be identical with a figure accompanied by an " eight deer " sign, represented on a slab from Monte Alban near Oaxaca in the National Museum of Mexico (cf. his frontispiece). Eight Deer first appears in the Zouche Codex on p. 26, accompanied by the year-sign 12 Acatl. But his story is not regularly taken up until p. 43 (the last page on the recto), after which it runs continuously throughout the verso. For other series in the codex see Codex Nuttall, pp. 27-33. The earlier pages have been studied by E. Seler, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xxxv (1903), pp. 27-49, " Die Korrekturen der Jahreslännge und der Länge der Venusperiode in den mexikanischen Bilderschriften," who holds that the representations on those pages have a calendrical significance. Pp. 92. Before 1519. The codex is most nearly related in style to the Vienna Codex, which appears to have been given by King Emmanuel of Portugal (d. 1521) to Cardinal Giulio de Medici, afterwards (1523) Pope Clement VII, and to have passed to other members of the Medici family. The present MS. may have had a similar history. It was in the library of the Dominican monastery of San Marco, Florence, in 1859, when it was purchased by John Temple Leader and presented to Robert Curzon (for the history of this transaction see Add. MS. 39046, ff. 74-80). Not in Curzon Cat.

Transferred to the Department of Ceramics and Ethnography.

City of Mexico: Picture-writing (story of " Eight Deer "): bef. 1519.

Eight Deer: Story of warrior so-called, in Mexican picture-writing: bef. 1519.

Art. Illuminations and Drawings MEXICAN: Picture-writing (Zouche Codex): bef. 1519.