Lord Eight Wind of Suchixtlan and the Heroes of Ancient Oaxaca: Reading History in the Codex Zouche-Nuttall

by Robert Lloyd Williams, F. Kent Reilly III (Introduction), John M. D. Pohl (Introduction)

Overview

In the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican world, histories and collections of ritual knowledge were often presented in the form of painted and folded books now known as codices, and the knowledge itself was encoded into pictographs. Eight codices have survived from the Mixtec peoples of ancient Oaxaca, Mexico; a part of one of them, the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, is the subject of this book. As a group, the Mixtec codices contain the longest detailed histories and royal genealogies known for any indigenous people in the western hemisphere. The Codex Zouche-Nuttall offers a unique window into how the Mixtecs themselves viewed their social and political cosmos without the bias of western European interpretation. At the same time, however, the complex calendrical information recorded in the Zouche-Nuttall has made it resistant to historical, chronological analysis, thereby rendering its narrative obscure.

In this pathfinding work, Robert Lloyd Williams presents a methodology for reading the Codex Zouche-Nuttall that unlocks its essentially linear historical chronology. Recognizing that the codex is a combination of history in the European sense and the timelessness of myth in the Native American sense, he brings to vivid life the history of Lord Eight Wind of Suchixtlan (AD 935-1027), a ruler with the attributes of both man and deity, as well as other heroic Oaxacan figures. Williams also provides context for the history of Lord Eight Wind through essays dealing with Mixtec ceremonial rites and social structure, drawn from information in five surviving Mixtec codices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780292725737
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	11/01/2009
Series:	The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Robert Lloyd Williams, a former student of renowned Mayanist Linda Schele, has studied the Mixtec codices since the 1980s and has taught courses relating to them since 1992. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Table of Contents

• Foreword by F. Kent Reilly III
• Author's Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction by John M. D. Pohl
• Part One
  • Chapter 1: It Happened Long Ago
  • Chapter 2: The People of the Codices
  • Chapter 3: The Narrative Structure of Codex Zouche-Nuttall Obverse
  • Chapter 4: Sacred Geography, Personified Geography
  • Chapter 5: Caves in Mesoamerican Iconography: Chalcatzingo and the Mixteca
• Part Two
  • Chapter 6: Lord Eight Wind's Introduction
  • Chapter 7: The War from Heaven, Part One
  • Chapter 8: The War from Heaven, Part Two
  • Chapter 9: Lord Eight Wind's Family
  • Chapter 10: Transition to the Future: Eight Wind, Two Rain, and Eight Deer
• Part Three
  • Chapter 11: Rituals of Order: Codices Zouche-Nuttall and Vienna
  • Chapter 12: The Problem of the Two Dead Lords
  • Chapter 13: The Epiclassic Mixtec Ceremonial Complex
• Appendix I: Biographical Sketches of Major Personnel from the Codices: Lord Eight Deer the Usurper, Lord Two Rain the King, and Lady Six Monkey of Jaltepec
• Appendix II: Notes for Codex Zouche-Nuttall Pages 1-4
• Appendix III: Codex Zouche-Nuttall Reverse Day Dates on Pages 46a-48a for Year 5 Reed (AD 1095) and Lord Eight Deer's Campaign as Lord of Tututepec
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index