The Problem of the Two Dead Lords
Codex Zouche-Nuttall reverse was painted, according to best guess, in thirteenth-century Oaxaca, and the obverse perhaps as late as the early to middle fifteenth century. The obverse is complete, but the reverse is unfinished. Various commentators have remarked that the obverse is obscure. The older reverse side is the sequential, chronologically progressive political biography of the great culture hero Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw of Tilantongo. Recent studies illuminate this biography, but some obscurities remain. The younger obverse document is episodic, presenting at least three sagas separated by genealogical data. The poorly understood obverse fits commentators’ characterization of the document perfectly.
This chapter examines two essential passages of the codex, one occurring on the ZN obverse pages 7d–8, and the other on reverse pages 80c-82b, depicting events recorded for Lord Eight Deer’s mature career as a Mixtec/Toltec techutli ruler of Tilantongo. These passages have not previously been linked in the literature. The first for consideration is obverse pages 7d–8, wherein we elucidate further the problem of the two dead lords.
These obverse pages present the first of three sagas recorded on this side of the manuscript: the history of the lineage founder, Lord Eight Wind of Monkey Hill (Cerro Jasmin/Suchixtlan). He was born from a cave in 1 Reed 1 Alligator (AD 935 [page 1a]). His history included many events, including the founding of lineages in several places (pages 1–2). In contrast, the War from Heaven (which began in AD 963), and in which he apparently did not participate, is recorded as a secondary story on pages 2b–4. Finally, Lord Eight Wind reigned as king of Monkey Hill/Suchixtlan, where he married Lady Ten Deer of Suchixtlan in AD 1008, when he was seventy-three years old. His second and third wives were Lady Five Grass, whom he married in 1010 AD, and Lady Ten Eagle, whom he wed one year later, when he was seventy-six years old.
One of the important things to note is that Eight Wind’s union with Lady Ten Deer produced two separate royal dynasties that later came into conflict: the first dynasty of Tilantongo (ZN page 5c), whose last king was Eight Wind’s great-great-grandson Lord Two Rain Twenty Jaguars, and the second dynasty of Jaltepec (Codex Selden page 5-III), whose queen at the time of conflict was Eight Wind’s granddaughter, Lady Six Monkey. At the time of conflict, Two Rain was six years old, and Lady Six Monkey was eight years old.
This saga ends abruptly with two events on pages 7c–8, for which, to the casual observer, there is no reason; however, closer examination illuminates the mystery and provides us with important insights into royal politics and religious practice among the Mixtecs of Postclassic Oaxaca.
The first of these two terminal scenes (ZN 7d) shows Lord Eight Wind seated in a temple at Monkey Hill speaking with his great-great-grandson Lord Two Rain Twenty Jaguars, who is illustrated just across the page-fold on page 8. This event is problematical because this interaction occurs in Mixtec Year 4 House (AD 1081), when Eight Wind would have been 146 years old. He is obviously deceased, yet speaking from Monkey Hill to his six-year-old descendant.1 Many modern students of the codices are undetermined about this, or else vacillate. Was Lord Eight Wind dead at this time, or merely very old? Based on the codex material interpreted in the previous chapters, it seems clear he was dead.
The second, and last, of these terminal scenes (page 8) ends the narrative sequence. The boy-king, Two Rain, speaks to his deceased relative located just across the page-fold, so this is part of the event begun on page 7 and is part of the first scene described. This is a masterstroke of pictorial narrative, explaining as it does past and future events.
This full-page scene occurs in Year 10 Flint (AD 1100), when Two Rain would have been twenty-five years old. He is seated in a temple (as was his ancestor, Lord Eight Wind) and speaking with thirteen assembled warriors, notwithstanding the fact that Two Rain had died mysteriously four years earlier. Thus we have the problem of the two dead lords.
The people of ancient Oaxaca believed that they could interact with the deceased either through the agency of an established oracle (Lady Nine Grass at Chalcatongo) or a yaha yahui priest. Byland and Pohl (1994:241) note: “Supernatural encounters with dead ancestors in caves are mentioned in the Relaciones of Mitlantongo and Penoles.” Indeed, historiographic evidence confirms the existence of a well-developed cult of the dead in pre-Columbian Mixtec times that was centered on mummy bundles of deceased royalty. Therefore, since both parties shown (Eight Wind and Two Rain) are deceased, we conclude that these post-mortem conferences are between the two lords’ respective mummy bundles and the living.
In post-Conquest times, Fray Franciso de Burgoa (1934 [1674], cited in Byland and Pohl 1994:199), described three prominent Oaxaca oracles that were consulted in important matters of state. The one that interests us here is that of the goddess of the underworld, Lady Nine Grass, whose oracular priest presided at the temple in Chalcatongo. In a cave near Chalcatongo the mummy bundles of deceased royalty were consulted by an oracular priest attired as Lady Nine Grass when called upon to do so. This was an important resource for Mixtec royalty when it came to resolving disputes.
These mummy bundles were housed ceremonially in caves in various places throughout the Mixteca. Remains of these cave shrines (now mostly destroyed) have been found in several locations other than Chalcatongo. One such investigation is described by Byland and Pohl (1994:87) in Cavua Colorado, located in a canyon wall directly below the ancient town of Hua Chino.
With this basic information in mind, we can infer with certainty that the two consultations with deceased kings illustrated for our attention concern the resolution of thorny questions important in the context of the Mixtec political and economic systems of their day. In both illustrations, though, it is important to note that the Oracle of Chalcatongo does not appear. These were priestly consultations alone. In the case of the boy-king Two Rain, he is attired in priestly garments during his visit with Eight Wind’s mummy, and we know the subject of this consultation was Jaltepec, a close ally of Chalcatongo.
If we look only at the ZN obverse page 8 scene, we find ourselves with a question: who was the priest who consulted with adult Two Rain’s mummy? None are mentioned there, only assembled warriors, but that information is, in fact, provided on the codex reverse; therefore, I assert that the obverse data is explanatory to reverse-side events, and the remaining data support this. We are also left to discover the exact nature of the important problem that the Mixtec scribes intended to illuminate.
This chapter proposes data interpretations suggesting that the material on the obverse pages 7c–8 explains an important conflict told in the biography of Lord Eight Deer of Tilantongo, related on the final pages of Codex Zouche-Nuttall reverse. Superficially, this is a tale of murder and revenge, but an in-depth analysis of historical background from the codices themselves details political history of major importance to Mixtec elite culture in general and, specifically, to the advancement of the political career of the self-made king, Eight Deer of Tilantongo. In fact, it probably explains why and how he became king by his own hand. As our conventional wisdom has it, necessity is the mother of invention—or, in Eight Deer’s case, opportunity is the agency of advancement.
The historical facts of this conflict—which can be drawn from codices Selden, Bodley, and Zouche-Nuttall—can be summarized briefly as having to do with established marriage alliances between royal families and the lucrative trade networks attendant upon them.
Lord Two Rain Twenty Jaguars was the last ruler of Lord Eight Wind of Suchixtlan’s first dynasty at Tilantongo. Traditional marriage alliance was maintained with the related royal dynasty at nearby Jaltepec. For unknown reasons, the six-year-old Two Rain consulted with his deceased ancestor Lord Eight Wind, after which the boy’s uncle Three Lizard (Eight Wind’s son) attacked Jaltepec and lost the war. This event likely precipitated the rift between Tilantongo and Jaltepec, with an attendant loss of prestige for Tilantongo.
Lord Eight Deer of Tilantongo, not of royal blood, but the son of the high priest, attended a conference at Chalcatongo two years later, wherein Lady Six Monkey of Jaltepec was given permission by the Chalcatongo oracle, Lady Nine Grass, to marry outside the Tilantongo marriage alliance agreement. Specifically, she was betrothed to a rival of Tilantongo, Lord Eleven Wind of Red and White Bundle. Codex Zouche-Nuttall, a Tilantongo document, shows this conference. So does Codex Selden, a Jaltepec document, although the accounts differ. In the first, Eight Deer and Lady Six Monkey are seen with the goddess-oracle Lady Nine Grass, who consults with the mummy bundle of Lord Three Lizard. Neither Two Rain of Tilantongo nor Eleven Wind of Red and White Bundle are included. Lord Eight Deer (who is twenty years old at the time) sits looking downward. The Selden scene omits Eight Deer and shows Lady Six Monkey and Lord Eleven Wind betrothed, but not married, by the oracle in AD 1083.
Six Monkey and Eleven Wind were not formally married until AD 1090. Six years later (AD 1096), Lord Two Rain died mysteriously and, as we discovered, became a mummy bundle. There was a power vacuum at Tilantongo.
This is the essential imbalance of political power that, it is assumed, resulted in Two Rain’s death almost twenty years after he consulted with his deceased great-great-grandfather Eight Wind. This and subsequent events had repercussions. Lord Eight Deer was at Chalcatongo when the conference occurred. His omission from the Codex Selden scene is suggestive, inviting speculation. All we can say about it, however, is that both codices are political documents: one for Tilantongo and the other for Jaltepec.
A chronological summary of these complicated historical events is helpful.
In AD 1081 the six-year-old king Lord Two Rain Twenty Jaguars of Tilantongo consults with the mummy bundle of his great-great-grandfather Lord Eight Wind of Monkey Hill/Suchixtlan/Cerro Jasmin. Three days later, Two Rain’s uncle, Lord Three Lizard, acting on his nephew’s behalf, attacks Jaltepec but loses the war and is captured. Lord Two Rain hides in a cave and consults an oracle there. This may actually be Two Rain’s consultation with his great-great-grandfather’s mummy, but abbreviated to save space in the pictogram text.
Two years later, in AD 1083, the conference between the oracle Lady Nine Grass of Chalcatongo and the disputants occurs. The Codex Zouche-Nuttall scene is unresolved but suggests the beginning of Lord Eight Deer’s mature career. The Codex Selden scene, however, shows the alliance created by the oracle between Jaltepec and Red and White Bundle (Hua Chino).
In AD 1090, Lady Six Monkey and Lord Eleven Wind are formally married at Red and White Bundle (Selden 8-III).
In AD 1096, Lord Two Rain, the last and heirless king of the first dynasty of Tilantongo, dies mysteriously. Codex Bodley (5-I) suggests that he commits ceremonial suicide.
With the Tilantongo dynasty defunct, teenage Lord Eight Deer—not a noble but the son of Tilantongo’s high priest, the chief of the Council of Four—begins his career.
Codex Zouche-Nuttall reverse is explicit regarding the career of Lord Eight Deer of Tilantongo after the disappointing conference at Chalcatongo. He immediately makes an offering to the sun in a Sun-Tree ceremony (ZN page 44c) and becomes Warlord of Tututepec, a town on the southwestern coast of Oaxaca, on the Gulf of Tehuantepec. The codex details his expansion of power beginning in AD 1083—the same year, but after the unfortunate conference at Chalcatongo. Having enterprised himself with boldness by force of arms, he conquered everything worthwhile or else subdued towns and polities by threat.
In the catalogue of polities subdued or controlled by Eight Deer, Chalcatongo is listed (page 50b), but the oracle Lady Nine Grass is not mentioned. The codex specifically displays Tututepec above Chalcatongo, despite the fact that they are widely separated geographically. Then Eight Deer travels outside his territory to Coixtlahuaca/Tulancingo, allies with the Tolteca/Chichimeca ruler there (Lord Four Jaguar), and receives the nose-perforation ornament of a techutli (lineage founder) in AD 1097—just one year after Lord Two Rain of Tilantongo dies. Lord Eight Deer thus acquires a prerogative of kingship: he is now a lineage founder.
Ever one to keep goals in sight and stay keenly aware of the interregnum at Tilantongo, with no lineage candidate to fill it, Lord Eight Deer conquers his way back to his hometown and assumes control. A rule in codex-painting must be noted here: the more pages devoted to an event, the more important that event is. Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw and his older half-brother, Lord Twelve Motion, convene a conference with 112 lords in AD 1098, an event that occupies fourteen and a quarter pages of Codex Zouche-Nuttall’s reverse forty-two pages. All displayed polities are under his control, including Chalcatongo. Again, the oracle Lady Nine Grass is absent: in her place before her temple there is a Lord One Death sun god substitute. Jaltepec and Red and White Bundle are not listed.
Lord Eight Deer, accompanied by his half-brother Twelve Motion and his ally Lord Four Jaguar, then conquers the Place Where the Sky Is Held Up (ZN page 75), enters the realm of the sun god (the oracle at Achiutla), establishes an alliance with that oracle, and returns to earth (pages 75–80b).
The next series of events occurs within one solar year (10 Flint), and the scribes were careful to record them by days in that year. A sequence of days is now listed, arranged chronologically in progressive order to illustrate succinctly the actions that connect the codex reverse narrative with the elaborations provided on that same manuscript’s obverse page 8. Although some day names and numbers occur twice in that year, the methodology employed to distinguish between them is simple: because the crucial day for the precipitating event occurs only once, the other days recorded must be in compliance with it.
The precipitating event that permits Lord Eight Deer to rectify the marriage misalliance that happened years before is stark: his older half-brother and confederate in arms, Lord Twelve Motion, is assassinated: his heart is excised while he takes a sweat bath. The chronological sequence is as follows:
1. Day 41, 11 Death, assassination of Lord Twelve Motion (page 81a).
+ 3 days
2. Day 44, 1 Water, baking Lord Twelve Motion’s mummy in hot sand (page 81b).
+ 8 days
3. Day 52, 9 Motion, completion of the mummification (page 81b).
+ 18 days
4. Day 70, 1 Eagle, gathering of warriors for the consultation with Lord Two Rain’s mummy (page 8b).
+ 20 days
5. Day 90, 8 Eagle. Unexplained (page 80d).
+ 13 days
6. Day 103, 8 Rabbit. Unexplained (page 80d).
+ 12 days
7. Day 115, 7 Flower. Funeral ceremonies for Lord Twelve Motion (page 81c–d).
+ 138 days
8. Day 253, 2 Flint. Lord Eight Wind consults with Lord Two Rain’s mummy at the warrior’s gathering (pages 8b and 82a).
The last day, 2 Flint, is crucial to connecting obverse page 8 to reverse page 82a. It is found on page 8, just below the temple effigy containing Lord Two Rain’s mummy and just above the ballcourt shown at the foot of the hill. The codex obverse page 8 shows the warriors collected there for a period of 183 days, which is probably the interval it took for Lord Eight Deer to raise an army against Red and White Bundle. The following year Lord Eight Deer destroys Red and White Bundle, sacrifices Lady Six Monkey of Jaltepec and her husband Lord Eleven Wind, and executes Lord Eleven Wind’s two sons by a previous marriage, but spares the boy Lord Four Wind, who is the child of Six Monkey and Eleven Wind.
Of the thirteen warriors named on ZN obverse page 8, nine are named on the reverse conference with 112 lords (table 12.1). Identification is by day name, not accoutrements, because the scenes depict different events interpreted by scribes in different eras.
This chapter offers convincing evidence, not supposition, that at least one seminal passage of Codex Zouche-Nuttall obverse explains crucial events in the life of Lord Eight Deer of Tilantongo as recorded in the first-painted reverse of that same codex: namely, ZN obverse page 8, which not only terminates a general biography of the lineage founder, Lord Eight Wind of Monkey Hill, but also displays the complex nature of elite politics and cultural events in Postclassic Oaxaca among the Mixtec people.
Table 12.1. Thirteen Warriors Named on Zouche-Nuttall Obverse Page 8 and Reverse Pages
This interpretation of an often misinterpreted set of passages on both sides of Codex Zouche-Nuttall involves more than a correct identification of mummy bundles. One often reads in commentaries that the mummy consulted by Lord Eight Deer on the codex reverse is that of his assassinated half-brother, Lord Twelve Motion, but as shown, this is not the case. Further data extrapolated from this historical biography of Lord Eight Deer reveals that he was motivated by political events that occurred during the boyhood of the last king of Tilantongo. We also see that he extended his “correction” of events to include an established and well-respected oracle, that of Lady Nine Grass at Chalcatongo. After the conference with Eight Deer and Lady Six Monkey at Chalcatongo, she disappears from Codex Zouche-Nuttall, only to appear in later history in Codex Bodley consulting with the man who would replace Eight Deer: Lord Four Wind, whom Eight Deer spared from death when he destroyed Red and White Bundle. However, the Bodley narrative does not record her as being at Chalcatongo. Alfonso Caso, in his 1960 commentary on Codex Bodley, is unable to identify her location. Eight Deer remembered that the oracle was complicit in permitting a new marriage alliance and, as Codex Zouche-Nuttall is at pains to state, allied himself with the Sun God oracle at Achiutla. Eight Deer was a yaha yahui priest and could consult the dead (Lord Two Rain) without the intervention of an oracle he had no reason to trust. Yet, as noted in previous chapters, this policy was begun in the regency of young Two Rain when he consulted the mummy of his ancestor Lord Eight Wind.
Perhaps this earlier consultation influenced the Chalcatongo oracle’s decision to vitiate the marriage alliance between Tilantongo and Jaltepec, but we will never know. Codex Selden’s history of the second dynasty of Jaltepec (Lady Six Monkey’s town of origin) does state an astonishing fact: women ruled there, and the town had a close alliance with Chalcatongo and its oracle. Codex Selden suggests that perhaps Jaltepec was a dependency of Chalcatongo. However, for his own reasons, Lord Eight Deer understood that the Chalcatongo oracle was not all-powerful, but subject to the convenience of a standing army. Lord Eight Deer’s agenda was busy, his goals complex, and his methods efficient and well planned.
Regarding Mixtec history, Byland and Pohl (1994:228) note that “the elite members of Mixtec society thus had the ability to manipulate history to their own advantage. Through the collusion of separate supernatural authorities the most influential noble families could fix their own version of the foundational history.”
Lord Eight Deer, and those who came after, surely did so, and in the process he bent the supernatural authorities to his own will to preserve the dignity and hereditary rights and policies of his native Tilantongo. Those who succeeded him and dominated Mixtec history were not only his own descendants. They were also from the Lord Eight Wind female Jaltepec/Hua Chino lineage through Lord Four Wind and his younger brother One Alligator. Speculation has it that Four Wind engineered Eight Deer’s assassination (Troike 1974) when Eight Deer was fifty-two years old, in AD 1115. Both brothers—Four Wind and One Alligator—married Eight Deer’s daughters, the princesses of Tilantongo.
1. The image of Lord Eight Wind seated in a temple after his death is wonderfully suggestive. Ancestral bundles were sacred, appropriate contents for a temple. Although few survive, one wonders if they were stored in miniature temple structures like those shown for the Inca mummies in Guaman Poma’s Corónica.