Lord Eight Wind of Suchixtlan and the Heroes of Ancient Oaxaca

by Williams, Robert Lloyd; Reilly, F. Kent, III; Pohl, John, M.D.

• ISBN13: 9780292721210
• ISBN10: 0292721218
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-11-15
• Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr

Summary

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.

Author Biography

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 recently completed a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. III
Author's Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Happened Long Ago	p. 29
The People of the Codices	p. 45
The Narrative Structure of Codex Zouche-Nuttall Obverse	p. 57
Sacred Geography, Personified Geography	p. 63
Caves in Mesoamerican Iconography: Chalcatzingo and the Mixteca	p. 69
Lord Eight Wind's Introduction	p. 93
The War from Heaven, Part One	p. 101
The War from Heaven, Part Two	p. 107
Lord Eight Wind's Family	p. 115
Transition to the Future: Eight Wind, Two Rain, and Eight Deer	p. 121
Rituals of Order: Codices Zouche-Nuttall and Vienna	p. 135
The Problem of the Two Dead Lords	p. 146
The Epiclassic Mixtec Ceremonial Complex	p. 156
Biographical Sketches of Major Personnel from the Codices: Lord Eight Deer the Usurper, Lord Two Rain the King, and Lady Six Monkey of Jaltepec	p. 163
Notes for Codex Zouche-Nuttall Pages 1-4	p. 187
Codex Zouche-Nuttall Reverse Day Dates on Pages 46a-48a for Year 5 Reed (AD 1095) and Lord Eight Deer's Campaignas Lord of Tututepec	p. 190
Color photo section follows page	p. 48.
Bibliography	p. 199
Index	p. 209
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