Codex Bodley Facsimile Edition

The Codex Bodley—also known as the Codex Ñuu Tnoo—is a pictorial screenfold created in the highlands of Mixteca in the early sixteenth century, before the arrival of Europeans in 1521. The obverse describes the history of Tilantongo (Ñuu Tnoo, modern Oaxaca), and the reverse relates the dynastic history of Ndisi Ñuu and Achiutla. These histories are told in pictographs in a palette dominated by red, yellow ocher, and black that proceed in a zig-zag pattern over forty pages.

The screenfold presents its histories in boustrophedon ("as the ox plows"). On the obverse, the genealogy unfolds left to right across pairs of pages, moving in rows back and forth either from top to bottom or bottom to top. The pattern is more complicated on the reverse.

Hundreds of Figures

The lords and ladies who ruled Mixtec city-states, including Ñuu Tnoo and Ndisi Ñuu, were essential emblems of the communities' identities. In the Codex Bodley, a series of vignettes identifies the married couples that—over centuries—represent the people's collective history. There are nearly 600 figures in all, including an impressive ritual procession of ambassadors, warlords, and priests (pp. 31-32, top three registers).

Each character is pictured and clearly labeled by his or her birth day and given name, often drawing from natural and animal motifs. One of twenty day signs plus a number of colored balls express the birth day. For example, Lady Six Flint "Precious Fire Serpent" is pictured with a fire serpent headdress, alluding to her given name. A fine line connects her to a nearby representation of a flint knife with six balls attached (p. 20, middle register).

Subsidiary Histories

The reverse of the screenfold presents a complicated structure; the dominant right-to-left zig-zag up and down pairs of panels is accompanied by a separate sequence of "notes" to the principal history and is occasionally interrupted by a narrow top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top (staircase) sequence, and branches off into two sub-histories. The viewer can follow the sequence by the openings in the red lines indicating where the narrative moves to another register.

A Script Transcending Language

The languages of the Pre-Columbian Mixtec communities were not mutually understandable, but the vocabulary of pictographs is. Thus, these dynastic histories, invariably of interest across communities whose lords and ladies intermarried, could be understood throughout the region.

A Continuing Story

The histories in the Codex Bodley establish the mythological roots of each dynasty and trace births and marriages up to around 1500. The red lines that divide the panels into registers, however, continue beyond the panels filled with picture writing, the implication being that the histories are ongoing.

A Book with Its Own Cover

The panels with pictographs are numbered in the correct order on the obverse (pp. 1-20) but confusingly in reverse order (left to right) on the reverse, where the predominant reading direction is right to left (pp. 21-40). The back of p. 40 is blank, forming a cover, and there are blank, unnumbered panels, one of which forms the other cover. The manuscript came to the Bodleian Library from its founder, Thomas Bodley (1545-1613), who acquired it before 1605.