Figure 10.1. Codex Zouche-Nuttall page 6 (British Museum folio no. 6). (© Trustees of the British Museum, The British Museum Company, Ltd.)
As mentioned in the previous chapter, Codex Zouche-Nuttall obverse page 6a illustrates Lord Eight Wind’s second and third wives. The dates of these marriages as they appear in the codex have been incorporated into my reconstructed chronology. Page 6b is a separate entity, and no other chronological markers appear in the manuscript text until pages 7d and 8.
Page 6b–d presents a series of individuals facing right, against the reading order and toward Lord Eight Wind’s children illustrated in the last tableau on page 5. The seven individuals, from right to left, are: the Ladies Nine Eagle and Twelve Dog; then, in the next column, the Lords Six Motion and Five House; and in the next column, Lords Five Deer, Twelve Alligator, and Lady Nine Monkey. Many have personal names attached and carry ceremonial instruments. Of those in this array, Lord Twelve Alligator was born from the great tree at Apoala (Vienna 37c). The last column of pictogram text (6e), to the reader’s left, begins a series of individuals facing left, toward the reading order and away from Eight Wind’s offspring.
The processing individuals (6b–d) are mysterious; however, they do serve an interpretative function by their position—that is, they face against the reading order and toward Eight Wind’s children. This position contra reading order serves as a visual “stop” and divides page 6a–c from the tableaux that follow it; that is, pages 6e–8. A similar technique is used on ZN reverse page 42, which is the parentage statement for Lord Eight Deer and his half-brother Lord Twelve Motion. The children that follow them face contra reading order, and this directional shift is a visual clue that separates scenes without providing a full stop, as would a dividing red line.
Figure 10.2. Codex Zouche-Nuttall page 7 (British Museum folio no. 7). (© Trustees of the British Museum, The British Museum Company, Ltd.)
The individuals in reading-order direction continue onto page 7, columns a–c. Counting the three on page 6, there are twelve in all. On page 6 are Lords Four Snake, Seven Flower (Vienna 33b), and Seven Motion (Vienna 33d). On page 7 are Lords Thirteen Reed, Nine House, and Five Motion; in the next column, from bottom to top, are the Ladies Nine Jaguar, Two Flint, and Six House; and in the last column, from top to bottom, Ladies Ten Deer, Nine House, and Three Eagle.
The tableaux of these mysterious individuals (who may in some instances be deceased, mummified ancestors) comprise a transition from the time of Lord Eight Wind and his family into the future. We know this because the final scene on page 7 displays a special event in which Lord Eight Wind reappears many years after his death. Page 7d illustrates him seated in the temple at Monkey Hill. He is very elderly, as indicated by the snaggle-tooth at the corner of his mouth. According to the date displayed (Year 4 House Day 1 Rain, AD 1081), he would be 146 years old. He is deceased yet shown alive and speaking with his six-year-old great-great-grandson, Lord Two Rain Twenty Jaguars (shown across the page-fold on 8a), the last king of the first dynasty of Tilantongo.
Mixtecs preserved their dead ancestors as mummies and stored the mummy-bundles in caves. Thus they could have festivals with them and consult them via certain priests or by the oracle of death, Lady Nine Grass at Chalcatongo. This prominence of the Mixtec Cult of the Dead was recorded by the early Spanish, notably de Burgoa, who compared Zapotec and Mixtec burial customs (1934 [1674], II:64). These early references specifically refer to Chalcatongo Temple and its oracle, Lady Nine Grass. Burgoa noted that the Mixtec kings were buried at a specific place, which he called “the Cave of Chalcatongo.” This custom of regarding the dead as having special abilities important for the living can also be related to European Catholic societies and the Medieval/Renaissance custom of establishing shrines of spiritual power that were special tombs for saints. An especially important and impressive one can still be seen at the Basilica of Saint Ambrose in Milan, Italy, which displays the skeletal relics of Saint Ambrose the Great (died ca. AD 400) and the martyred twins, saints Gervasius and Protasius, to constant public veneration. It is a common practice for people to pilgrimage to the saints at Milan for spiritual consultation as well as consolation.
Mixtec encounters with the dead shown alive also occur in Codex Alfonso Caso (Colombino-Becker I) when the warlord of Tilantongo, Eight Deer Jaguar Claw, enters the realm of the sun god and overcomes defending warriors who were previously sacrificed by heart excision (Troike 1974:267; Codex Colombino-Becker I, 2–3-III). ZN page 4 also displays two deceased, previously mummified individuals as alive during a consultation with living persons.
The ZN page 7 tableau with Lord Eight Wind’s mummy is a consultation invoked by his great-great-grandson Lord Two Rain Twenty Jaguars in Year 4 House Day 1 Rain. Six-year-old Two Rain is shown on page 8a (figure 10.3) attired as a priest and bowing to his great-ancestor, seen across the page-fold on page 7d. This begins a series of events in Mixtec history that prove ruinous for Tilantongo.
Page 8a, second figure up from the bottom right, shows the boy-king, Lord Two Rain, venerating his deceased ancestor, Lord Eight Wind of Monkey Hill, shown across the page-fold in the last column of text on page 7. Page 8b shows the adult Lord Two Rain seated in a temple and surrounded by warriors. Two of these warriors appear at the top of page 7d above Lord Eight Wind in the Monkey Hill Temple, and their presence in that position demonstrates that these two tableaux are continuous despite a separation in time. It may be that the two warriors in the top register of page 7 refer to Tilantongo’s attack on Jaltepec, when Lord Two Rain was only six years old, and not to the later event, some four years after his death. The date on page 8b is Year 10 Flint (AD 1100), Days 1 Eagle and 2 Flint (an interval of 280 days). Year 10 Flint occurs four years after Lord Two Rain’s death in AD 996. Therefore, he, too, is a mummy shown as alive and communicating with the living. This event connects in chronology with an event in the career of Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw of Tilantongo (figure 10.4). A cognate scene appears on pages 82–84 of this codex reverse and establishes that, indeed, Lord Two Rain as seen here is a mummy. Considering this, page 8 (the last page of saga 1) ends on a high note, without resolution, and can only be resolved by integrating it with relevant codex tableaux on Zouche-Nuttall reverse. This is the reason the transitional tableaux of processing individuals on pages 6 and 7 move us into the future, into the time of Lord Eight Deer of Tilantongo.
Figure 10.3. Codex Zouche-Nuttall page 8 (British Museum folio no. 8). Six-year-old Lord Two Rain is the second figure up from the bottom right. The older, post- mortem Lord Two Rain is the central figure seated in the hilltop temple at mid-page. (© Trustees of the British Museum, The British Museum Company, Ltd.)
The history encapsulated by this final tableau details a complex series of historical events. They involve Mixtec marriage alliances, the oracle of the dead at Chalcatongo, Lord Eight Wind’s descendant Lord Two Rain of Tilantongo, and a political conflict resolved later during the lifetime of Lord Eight Deer, who usurped the throne of Tilantongo after Two Rain’s death. This complex story is best told by the codices themselves, and we will use three of them to do it briefly: the present manuscript, Zouche-Nuttall, both sides; Codex Selden, a document of the royal families of Jaltepec; and Codex Bodley.
In Year 4 House on Day 1 Rain (AD 1081), the boy-king of Tilantongo, Lord Two Rain, attired as a priest (ZN page 8a), conferred with his ancestor, the deceased Lord Eight Wind of Monkey Hill (ZN page 7d). According to Codex Selden (6-II), three days after this consultation, one of Lord Eight Wind’s twin sons, the elderly Three Lizard, acted on behalf of boy Two Rain of Tilantongo; attacked Tilantongo’s marriage alliance partner, Jaltepec; and lost the war and his life, after which Two Rain sought refuge in a cave-shrine.
This event fractures the marriage alliance between Tilantongo and Jaltepec, and later there is a conference with Lady Nine Grass at Chalcatongo (ZN page 44). She confirms not only the severance of the previous alliance between Tilantongo and Jaltepec, but reassigns it between Jaltepec (in the person of Lady Six Monkey, Lord Eight Wind’s granddaughter) and Tilantongo’s rival, Hua Chino, in the person of a suitor, Lord Eleven Wind (Selden 6-IV).
Lord Two Rain, the defeated king of Tilantongo, lived until AD 1096. According to Codex Zouche-Nuttall reverse, Lord Eight Deer used this time to enterprise himself successfully by gaining a reputation as ruler of Tututepec and developing skills as a warlord and politician (including formulating an alliance with the Tolteca-Chichimeca). After Two Rain commits suicide under mysterious circumstances (Codex Bodley 5-I), Eight Deer becomes ruler at Tilantongo and avenges the insult to his town by destroying Hua Chino and its rulers, Lord Eleven Wind and Lady Six Monkey of Jaltepec (ZN pages 81–84; Bodley 34–35; Codex Alfonso Caso 36–37). Lord Eight Deer also sacrifices Eleven Wind’s sons by a previous marriage, but spares his two children from Lady Six Monkey, Lords Four Wind and One Alligator.
This is the ultimate meaning of the mummy scenes on the final two pages of the first saga of Zouche-Nuttall’s obverse. It connects the previous Lord Eight Wind founding events—events which profoundly influenced the entire subsequent history of the Mixteca and the Stone Men—to events that happened in the future, in the time of the all-famous Lord Eight Deer of Tilantongo. These two men were the greatest social “reformers” in Mixtec history, but the connection between Zouche-Nuttall obverse and reverse events requires further elaboration, which would have been inserted by the original performers of the drama.
The year of Lord Two Rain’s mummy event on ZN page 8 is 10 Flint (AD 1100) Days 1 Eagle to 2 Flint, with the latter (2 Flint) qualifying the mummy event itself. We know this to be so because Day 2 Flint is recorded on that page near a ballcourt at the place where Lord Two Rain is displayed (a ball-court consultation with the dead also appears on page 4 tableau 6). Day 1 Eagle is prominently displayed “floating” near the year indicator near the middle of the page. This same date (Year 10 Flint Day 2 Flint) appears on Zouche-Nuttall reverse, pages 80–82, prior to Lord Eight Deer’s attack on Hua Chino. Page 82 depicts Eight Deer consulting with an unnamed mummy-bundle on Day 2 Flint at a site drawn as a decorated snake—that is, the place in Codex Bodley (5-I) where Lord Two Rain’s mummy was interred after his mysterious death four years previously. After this consultation, Lord Eight Deer attacks Hua Chino in the following year, 11 House (AD 1101). The interval of 280 days written on ZN page 8 is from Day 1 Eagle to Day 2 Flint, and that is likely the period in which Lord Eight Deer collected his army, a few chiefs of whom are shown displayed and surrounding Lord Two Rain’s living mummy as he gesticulates with his right hand. This emblem of communication—his right hand pointing—also contains a reference to the receptor of his communication; namely, a single jaguar claw, which is Lord Eight Deer’s personal name. On Codex Zouche-Nuttall reverse, Lord Eight Deer points to Lord Two Rain’s mummy; on the codex obverse Lord Two Rain’s mummy points and has an emblem of Eight Deer’s personal name on the sleeve of his pointing hand, indicating they were communicating with each other. And, last, the 280-day interval is why the siege of Hua Chino began in the following year, 11 House (AD 1101).
It is clear, therefore, that the reverse side Zouche-Nuttall scene shows Lord Two Rain as an actual mummy and the object of Lord Eight Deer’s ceremony preparatory to besieging Hua Chino. The display recorded on obverse pages 7 and 8 shows Two Rain and his ancestor Eight Wind alive post-mortem and communicating with the living. The first consultation starts a marriage alliance war, and the second resolves it, or nearly so. The history continues and has an unexpected outcome—but that story is not within the purview of this book. Interestingly, after consulting with Lord Two Rain’s mummy on ZN page 82a, Lord Eight Deer burns it (82b). Thereafter Eight Deer, now a Mixtec-Toltec lord, becomes founder of the second dynasty of Tilantongo.
Figure 10.4. Codex Zouche-Nuttall page 82 (British Museum folio no. 88). Lord Eight Deer consults with Lord Two Rain’s mummy and then burns it. (© Trustees of the British Museum, The British Museum Company, Ltd.)
Obviously, the later scribes who wrote Zouche-Nuttall obverse connected it with Lord Eight Deer events on the older Zouche-Nuttall reverse. They did so to provide clarification by identifying the unnamed mummy that was the subject of Lord Eight Deer’s communication ceremony. They also connected the important founder, Lord Eight Wind, with the equally important and famous usurper, Lord Eight Deer.
Why did Eight Deer burn Two Rain’s mummy? Perhaps, since the oracle of the dead (whose job it was to consult with mummies) had caused so much trouble by severing the marriage alliance between Tilantongo and Jaltepec, Eight Deer wanted to make sure no one else could talk to it—and he wanted to remove Two Rain from the company of ancestors. Zouche-Nuttall reverse implies that after the oracle’s action, Eight Deer rose to power and suppressed it, so, perhaps, Eight Deer was striking a blow to transfer power from the Chalcatongo oracle to priestly Mixtec kings. These priests also had the authority to consult with the dead, as Eight Deer’s talk with Two Rain’s mummy demonstrates.
This analysis of only the first eight pages of Zouche-Nuttall’s reverse is a chronological one. The idea is to define indigenous Mixtec history as they wrote it by translating their calendar to our European calendar. At this point, it is possible to list all twenty-six dates on the first eight codex pages with the people and events they qualify (table 10.1). Perhaps it seems spare when written this way, but it is not—especially when we remember that these pictogram manuscripts encoded narratives that came to life through elaborated performance. These histories (mainly the histories of ceremonies), sung on special occasions, were acted, at least in part. Therefore, these histories were always alive and contemporary on demand. I remarked previously that in this Native American culture there was no division between the “physical” and “metaphysical.” To dress and act as a certain being was to be that being, and it is likely the same applied to enacting historical events as well. They were enacted and therefore always contemporary. This is not a concept alien to us. Our modern religious ceremonies are “timeless” and enact eternal events so as to always keep them in the present.
Throughout the twenty-six dates recorded on the first eight pages of Codex Zouche-Nuttall obverse, 165 years of history unfold, from the Epiclassic era to the Early Postclassic period (table 10.1). Lord Eight Wind’s biography encompasses a possible human lifespan, and his life and history as detailed on the codex obverse are connected to those that transpired in the time of Lord Eight Deer the Jaguar Claw of Tilantongo, whose life and history are detailed on the codex reverse. The scribes who painted the first side of Codex Zouche-Nuttall had a vested interest in connecting what was for them older epic history with more recent epic history, and doing that provided a detailed saga of the founding of their people’s culture. Therefore, this analysis elucidates the purpose of Codex ZN pages 1–8.
This pre-Hispanic history of the Mixtec people of Oaxaca is as astonishing, dramatic, colorful, insightful, and valuable as any we have from ancient Greece, Rome, or Medieval Europe. Great men and women, with interested motives, interacted forcefully and dramatically with people and places—physical and metaphysical, familial and political—to weave the elaborate tapestry of their enduring culture. As did the non-Mixtec cultures mentioned, these great men and women seized their moments with forceful intelligence and insight. They created the kingdoms of their Mixteca. These royal people stand now as “types” of ancient Oaxaca, itself a unique culture area amid the rich, intellectually nourishing splendors of ancient Mesoamerica. Although comprising only eight pages of a much longer text, the beginning of Codex Zouche-Nuttall and its story of Lord Eight Wind of Suchixtlan inspires the anthropologist, ethnographer, and historian with many feelings. Perhaps chief among them is gratitude for the privilege of knowing the cultural poetry and heroic deeds of great men and women who lived long ago, and whose descendants are alive today in the Mixteca.
Table 10.1. Complete Chronology of Codex Zouche-Nuttall Obverse Pages 1–8
