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Description
The Codex Aubin is a colonial period text bound in the European style. One of several central Mexican annals of the period, it offers a year-by-year account of the twelfth-century wanderings of the of Aztec tribes from their homeland in Aztlan, the imperial history of Tenochtitlan, and the events of the Spanish Conquest up to the arrival of a new viceroy and archbishop to Mexico City in 1607-1608. In Mesoamerican calendars, years could only begin on one of four of the twenty named days in the 260-day calendar, and the combination of that day name with the day’s number from one to thirteen specified the year within a 52-year Calendar Round. The red blocks on the left-hand side of the page contain the year-beginning dates, 11 Flint Knife, 12 House, 13 Rabbit, read from top to bottom. The Nahuatl language entry for the last year on the page, 1 Reed (A.D. 1519), records the arrival of the Spanish in their three-masted ship. On the facing page, an Aztec and a Spanish warrior brandish weapons in front of the twin temples of the Aztec Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan.
Reference:
Leibsohn, Diana (2006) “Aubin, Codex.” in In David Carrasco, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures: The Civilizations of Mexico and Central America. Electronic Resource, http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195108156.001.0001/acref-9780195108156-e-29.
Curation Date
9-2013
Photo Source
Special Collections, University of Kentucky Libraries
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
