The War from Heaven, Part Two
Figure 8.1. Codex Zouche-Nuttall page 4 (British Museum folio no. 4), the War from Heaven, page 2. (© Trustees of the British Museum, The British Museum Company, Ltd.)
This page is visually and chronologically complex, with six tableaux and four year dates, one of which (10[9]) House) is reconstructed. These years are: 12 Flint (AD 972), 13 Rabbit (AD 986), 6 Rabbit (AD 966), and 10(9) House (AD 969). Three tableaux are concerned with war events, one with a retrospective event, and the final two with events after the war.
Tableau 1. The event depicted in the upper right corner of page 4 occurred in Year 12 Flint (AD 972), with a one-day interval from days 7 Alligator to 8 Wind. There is no ambiguity about this interval since both numbered days occur only once in vague solar Year 12 Flint. This year was first seen on page 3, tableau 3, associated with Lord Seven Motion’s sacrifice of Stone Men.
The antagonists are three identically costumed males painted with red and white stripes who emerge from a cave opening in the sky and descend to earth. The sky itself is a place sign and has the day names of two divinities within it: Two Alligator and Seven Flower. The striped men have no day names but are given meteorological qualities. The first one (to the reader’s left) makes a loud sound and is thus associated with thunder. He also holds a heavy object about to be thrown. The second striped man, in the center, is lightning, and he holds a long object curled at either end and festooned with stars, indicating it is bright. The third man, on the right, is rain, for he holds a gout of water. All three are armed with war instruments: darts and shields. In the animistic religion of the Zapotecs, natural forces such as lightning and its companions of cloud, rain, wind, and hail were personified, as were earthquake and thunder, called “lightning’s earthquake” (Marcus and Flannery 1996:19). This Codex Zouche-Nuttall scene reflects such personification of natural forces, as does Rain God Hill (Yucuñudahui) on previous pages.
Tableau 2. This scene, directly below the first, shows Lord Four Snake (the deity-brother of Lord Seven Snake who first appeared on page 3, tableau 2, defending Yucuita) and an unnamed Lord Seven Motion capturing two of the striped men. These two captives are without meteorological attributes. Lord Four Snake stands on a square containing the year sign for 10 House, which is corrected here to be 9 House (AD 969), three years before tableau 1. This is one of four connected squares, each with illustrations within: the next square to the right contains a day sign for “flower,” the next for “grass,” and the last an unnumbered year sign for House.
Tableau 3. This scene is brief: Lord Four Snake (brother of Seven Snake) sacrifices an eagle named One Jaguar in Year 12 Flint on Day 12 Motion (AD 972). The deity name Two Alligator, which first appeared in the sky in tableau 1 on this page, is repeated here at the same level with Lord Four Snake’s name. This is not a bird-decapitation sacrifice, but rather a heart excision sacrifice, with the eagle lying upon a hill toponym. Birds for sacrifice are not usually named and, typically, they are decapitated and not subjects of heart excision.
Tableau 4. This retrospective scene shows the mummy-bundling of two supernatural lords in Year 6 Rabbit Day 2 Motion (AD 966). A bird sacrifice accompanies this ceremonial bundling of Lords Seven Flower (whose name appeared in the sky in tableau 1 on this page) and Four Motion. Both lords are associated with the maguey goddess and various ceremonies in Codex Vienna, as mentioned in the previous chapter. Two unnamed secondary actors directly above the bundled lords are singing, and both hold trilobed wands of the kind seen on page 1. The day sign 9 Motion is between them. This Year 6 Rabbit tableau introduces events in the next tableau (see appendices II and III). Both days (2 Motion and 9 Motion) occur twice in Year 6 Rabbit 2 Motion on days 62 and 322, and 9 Motion on days 82 and 342, so there are always twenty days between them.
Tableau 5. This tableau is displayed across the top of page 4 from right to left and spans text columns B and C. It shows three unnamed lords and Lord One Wind facing left and processing to a Stone Man named Five Flower, who faces right. Five Flower appears on page 2 as a ceremonial participant at Lord Eight Wind’s ordering ceremony for Yucuñudahui. According to visual presentation, Lord Five Flower is one of three individuals but separate from them: the Lord Ten Death and the rain god, Dzaui, are directly below him and facing right. These latter two lords are in conference with others: Lord Ten Death with Lady Eight Monkey (who was captured at Yucuñudahui on page 3, tableau 1) and the rain god, Dzaui, with Lord Two Dog. This is one of the few instances where the rain god is personified; another occurs on ZN page 5. Lord Ten Death is presenting Lady Eight Monkey with a kind of baton, and Dzaui, who has been noted as the chief patron of the race of Stone Men, is speaking with Lord Two Dog. A round grass mat for the bird sacrifice is shown between Dzaui and Lord Two Dog. The date is Year 13 Rabbit Day 2 Deer (AD 986).
This tableau is introduced by tableau 4 and connected to the one that follows in this page’s last column of text. The ceremony depicted is a bird-decapitation sacrifice combined with the subsequent conference.
Tableau 6. The events of this tableau also occurred in Year 13 Rabbit Day 2 Deer, but at two places: the Ballcourt of Death (last seen on page 3, tableau 6) and Eleven Alligator place (also on page 3, tableau 6, at the maguey goddess and opossum ceremony). This tableau is a séance wherein Lady Eight Monkey and an unnamed woman are seated at Eleven Alligator place. Lady Eight Monkey faces the previously mummified and bundled Lords Seven Flower and Four Motion, now shown alive and seated in the Ballcourt of Death. Directly above the unnamed woman (who faces away from Eight Monkey) is the day sign 7 Wind. A cup filled with red liquid and surmounted by an indistinguishable object is connected to the round scene directly above Eight Monkey’s head. A large bird hovers above both women.
Regarding the day signs 2 Deer and 7 Wind (assuming that the latter is a day sign, and not Lady Eight Monkey’s companion’s name), they both appear only once in Year 13 Rabbit. Day 7 Wind is first (#47), and 2 Deer is second (#172), with an interval of 125 days between them. So, by chronological progression the tableaux from four to six are ordered: tableau 4, bundling of two lords (AD 966); tableau 6, on Day 7 Motion, the séance with the two bundled lords (AD 986); tableau 5, the conference with Lord Five Flower, Dzaui, Lord Ten Death, Lord Two Dog, and Lady Eight Monkey.
The séance tableau is drawn in a slightly smaller scale; however, the date of this tableau, Year 13 Rabbit Day 2 Deer, is critical because it directly corresponds to events in Codex Vienna (35–37) involving Lord Eight Wind (Vienna 35a) and the founding of the Tree-Born lineage at Apoala. The Stone Man conflict, which began at Yucuñudahui, ended at the same time the War from Heaven did (AD 979), and, according to Codex Vienna, a new lineage system was instituted subsequently. The terminal scenes of both page 3 (the Maguey/Pulche Goddess ceremony) and page 4 (the séance and the conference with the rain god Dzaui and Lord Two Dog) are related and terminate the war sequences of each page as a kind of visual literary device that relates the Apoala events to those in the northern Nochixtlan Valley after the War from Heaven.
Another critical point about this final page 4 tableau and the one preceding it is that they bring together both a prominent lord of the Stone Men (Five Flower) and his deity, the rain god Dzaui, both displayed in peaceful circumstances. Since the War from Heaven began at Yucuñudahui, Rain God Hill, the scribes now relate a peaceful conclusion achieved between the nobles of Apoala, the Stone Men, and their deified town of Yucuñudahui.
As mentioned, this Zouche-Nuttall tableau depicts a conference and resembles similar gatherings seen in Codex Vienna, specifically conferences after the Apoala Tree-Birth ceremony (Vienna 37–35). Subsequent to the Tree-Birth ceremony, there are three conferences in Year 13 Rabbit Day 2 Dog. The first (and closest to the ceremony) occurs on pages 37b–36b. In it, twelve lords—among them Lords Ten Death (also on ZN page 4, tableau 5), Ten Dog, and Ten Jaguar—speak to ten nobles, among them Lady Eight Monkey (who also appears on ZN pages 3 and 4).
The second conference, on Vienna pages 36b–c, involves Lords Nine Wind Quetzalcoatl and four other lords who are speaking to six lords, among whom is Eleven Alligator (Eight Wind’s companion on ZN pages 1 and 2). In the third conference (Vienna 36b–35a), the Ladies Seven and Five Flint and the Lords Five and Seven Vulture speak to ten lords, among whom are Lord Seven Flower (also on ZN page 4) and our protagonist Lord Eight Wind Twenty (ZN pages 1–8).
After the establishment of the Apoala lineage (Vienna 35–34d), a fourth conference occurs. The brother gods, Lords Four and Seven Snake (both seen on ZN pages 3 and 4), speak to twenty-six nobles prior to the beginning of the Vienna ordering rituals. The ones who also appear in the Zouche-Nuttall pages examined so far include Lords Two Dog, Four Motion, Seven Flower, and Seven Motion, Lady Eleven Snake (also in the maguey ceremony, ZN page 3), Lord Seven Wind (ZN page 3, tableau 5), Lady Six Eagle (ZN page 3, at Yucuita), and Lady Eight Deer (ZN page 3, tableau 4).
After the Apoala Tree-Birth ceremony but prior to the Vienna ordering rituals, several individuals present at the various conferences at Apoala are major actors in the events on ZN pages 3 and 4, With the exception of Lord Five Flower, the Stone Men, Dzaui the rain god, the maguey ceremony Ladies Six and Five (Snake?), Lords Seven and Five Dog, the five striped men, the two unnamed actors at the mummy-bundling ceremony, Lord One Wind, and three unnamed ceremonialists processing to Lord Five Flower, all of the other actors on ZN pages 3 and 4 are in pivotal Apoala events in Codex Vienna.
Obviously, Apoala played a major role in the War from Heaven, before and after the Tree-Birth ceremony. Lord Eight Wind Eagle Flints (Twenty) is a fulcrum of these events, chiefly because of his activities at Yucuñudahui (Rain God Hill). Yucuñudahui is among the first places mentioned in Codex Vienna (47b) as the site of the first earthly activities of Lord Nine Wind Quetzalcoatl after being born from a sacrificial stone knife in the sky. According to Codex Vienna, it is one of the places in a district where Nine Wind Quetzalcoatl holds sky and water above the earth. This makes a conclusive statement about the importance of Rain God Hill and establishes an ideological link between the two deities Dzaui (the rain god) and Nine Wind Quetzalcoatl, who conducted important conferences listed in Codex Vienna, and Lord Eight Wind, who conducted important ceremonies in Zouche-Nuttall. The ideological link between Nine Wind Quetzalcoatl and Lord Eight Wind Eagle Flints (Twenty) appears in text subsequently, especially as regards their interlaced chronologies—the first recorded in Codex Vienna, and the second (for Eight Wind) recorded in Codex Zouche-Nuttall.
Since this interpretation is driven by chronological sequences, it is productive to integrate both sets of pages (1 and 2, and 3 and 4) in table 8.1 by progression of years.
Alfonso Caso (1960:58a) remarks that the War from Heaven “which ended the dynasty of [Wasp Hill] is extraordinarily important in the history of the Mixtec region, for it was this development which permitted Tilantongo to establish itself as the metropolis of the Northern Mixteca.” (Caso referred to Wasp Hill, its modern designation, as “Hill that Opens-Bee.” I have modernized it here because scholars writing after Caso refer to the site as “Hill of the Wasp,” and I, as “Wasp Hill.”) This event—or, more accurately, events—are indeed extraordinarily important for they are twice told in two codices, Zouche-Nuttall pages 3–4 and 20b–21a, and Codex Bodley pages 3–4 and 34–36. As seen in the forgoing description and analysis, the ZN pages provide the most detail for us by dividing the war into two accounts from two political regions of the Nochixtlan Valley: the north, pages 3 and 4, and the south, pages 20b–21a (Pohl 1994:53).
It also indicates that two wars were fought as one, sequentially: first with the original inhabitants of the Mixteca, the Stone Men, and another with the Striped Men. This latter group is unnamed as to individuals, and there is no other course left but to associate them as allies with the Wasp Hill dynasty and Zapotec influences. In both Zouche-Nuttall appearances these mysterious beings have meteorological attributes and, as mentioned, no calendric names.
While the ZN pages 20b–21a account informs us that this was a dynastic conflict against Wasp Hill, Codex Bodley provides the most detail about the extermination of this political lineage, naming perhaps thirteen royal personages who were executed (as does ZN page 20a–b). Codex Bodley portrays the oracle of the dead, Lady Nine Grass of Chalcatongo, as the chief executioner of Wasp Hill royalty, but she is shown only in the second account in Codex Zouche-Nuttall, which displays her as a combatant and as executing Lord Nine Wind Curly Hair. This activity highlights Lady Nine Grass’s role in determining lineage alliance and validity, as will be seen later in text during the lineage war between Tilantongo and Hua Chino.
Table 8.1. Chronology of Codex Zouche-Nuttall Obverse Pages 1–4
According to the Zouche-Nuttall chronology, the war lasted for sixteen years. It had many anabases, skirmishes, and battles. The next year after the 13 Rabbit 2 Deer conference (AD 986), which ends ZN page 4, is 1 Reed 1 Alligator (AD 987). A full-length red line divides pages 4 and 5, signifying the end of this section of the narrative. Lord Eight Wind is seen on page 1, tableau 4 at Suchixtlan on 1 Reed 1 Alligator, the date that begins the resumption of his biography on page 5.
