The Codex Waecker-Gotter, also known as the ''Code Sanchez-Solís'' or ''Codex Egerton'', is a
Pre-Conquest-style manuscript from
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
that since 1911 has been in 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 docum ...
's collection (reference number Am1962,03.8).
British Museum Collection
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Description
The codex is made of animal skin and consists of 16 leaves, each measuring approximately 27 x 21 cm; the total length of the manuscript is 4.42 m. Both sides of the codex are painted, but over time the condition of the paint has deteriorated, and one page seems to have been deliberately effaced, perhaps by a colonial official, as it bears a Spanish stamp.
The manuscript was probably first drawn in the 16th century, with later additions made in the 17th or 18th century. Most experts consider the style of the artwork to be Mixtec
The Mixtecs (), or Mixtecos, are indigenous Mesoamerican peoples of Mexico inhabiting the region known as La Mixteca of Oaxaca and Puebla as well as La Montaña Region and Costa Chica Regions of the state of Guerrero. The Mixtec Culture wa ...
with some 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 Indigenous peoples of Mexico, ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those g ...
elements.
Content
The document is an important witness to the transition between Pre-Columbian times and the early colonial period in Mexico. It describes a genealogy that comprises 26 different generations that have been estimated to have lived between 970 and 1490 AD; the men are shown wearing masks and crowns while the women are in general depicted in the kneeling position. On one page the town of Cuquila Santa Maria in Tlaxiaco
Tlaxiaco is a city, and its surrounding municipality of the same name, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It is located in the Tlaxiaco District in the south of the Mixteca Region, with a population of about 17,450.
The city is formally known as Her ...
is illustrated, along with its first king 'Lord One Alligator Tlaloc' and his wife 'One Alligator Sun', who may have been the founding member of the dynasty.
Provenance
The manuscript was probably made over a period of time by different hands in the Mixteca Baja
La Mixteca is a cultural, economic and political region in Western Oaxaca and neighboring portions of Puebla, Guerrero in south-central Mexico, which refers to the home of the Mixtec people. In their languages, the region is called either Ñuu Djau ...
region. In 1869, it came in the possession of Felipe Sanchez Solis who sold it to Freiherr von Waecker-Gotter, a member of the German diplomatic corps in Mexico between 1880 and 1888. It was bought by the British Museum in 1911 from funds bequeathed by France Henry Egerton.
See also
*Codex Zouche-Nuttall
The Codex Zouche-Nuttall or Codex Tonindeye is an accordion-folded pre-Columbian document of Mixtec pictography, now in the collections of the British Museum. It is one of about 16 manuscripts from Mexico that are entirely pre-Columbian in origin ...
, also in the British Museum
Bibliography
*U Berger, 'Mexican painted Manuscripts in the United Kingdom', British Museum Occasional Paper, Number 91, 1998
*G. Brotherstone, Painted books of Mexico (London, The British Museum Press, 1995)
*C. McEwan, Ancient Mexico in the British (London, The British Museum Press, 1994)
References
{{reflist
Mixtec codices
Artefacts from Africa, Oceania and the Americas in the British Museum
Mexico–United Kingdom relations