Writing involves combining repeatable signs in different contexts to create meanings. While we can suppose strict adherence to what was being referred to, whether a ritual calendar, genealogy or myth, the scribe was probably expected to display their talent in expressing it - hence the variation, the lush and exquisite aestheticism, the intense and clever multilayered wordplay in the codices. Scribes were lauded as talented and valorised within codices and where ever there is any mention of them, such as Batz and Chouen in the Mayan Popul Vuh and post colonial records such as the Florentine Codex. Variations across codices depicting the same scenes indicate that a scribe's work was not to reproduce exact copies but that some leeway was allowed to depict specific scenarios according to their own skill and interpretation. Just as poets play on the multiple meanings of words, so too these scribes/artists/priests/poets played on the multiple meanings of images - a visual poetry. Mixtec writing is an art possible only in pictoglyphic media, different to phonetic writing and visual art and irreducible to a combination of the two. Mixtec writing presents numerous problems for interpretation. The Codex Yuta Tnoho, formerly known as the Codex Vindobonensis (because it is held at the Library of Vienna), of the Mixtec civilisation is one of the finest yet least studied of the codices and the tree glyph seems of central importance to it. These codices are examples of an artform not possible in Western colonisers' language and artistic techniques. They are documents of civilisations that developed for thousands of years in isolation from the civilisations of Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. These are among the worlds most precious manuscripts, not only because of their antiquity, beauty and rarity. Of this literature only about 8 to 20 codices remain. These civilisations had libraries full of richly illuminated manuscripts and codices. Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire was 10 times larger than any city in Europe at the time. The term 'Ñuu' doesn't correspond exactly to the English word 'people' but has a broader meaning including 'place' and 'community'.īefore Hernan Cortes arrived in Mexico in 1519 the Aztec, Maya and Mixtec civilisations were flourishing. The term Mixtec people use to refer to themselves in their own language is Ñuu Sabi, meaning 'people of the rain', though the spelling and pronunciation varies as the region includes many languages. The term 'Mixtec' comes from a Nahuatl (Aztec) word meaning 'people of the clouds'. A low resolution copy of the original is available from FAMSI: Codex Yuta Tnoho (Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus), p37. There are some minor differences but a high resolution copy of the original, held at the Austrian National Library in Vienna, is not available. The original Codex Yuta Tnoho, was scribed circa 1500. The facsimile was made by Agostino Aglio in 1825-1831 and is held in the British Museum. This image of the glyph is from a facsimile of the Codex Yuta Tnoho. The codex, formerly known as Vindobonensis, is so named because the codex and the central tree glyph refers to the place Yuta Tnoho (in Ñuu Sabi / Ñuu Dzaui), also known as Santiago Apoala (in Spanish-Aztec). This site provides tools and information to help interpret ancient Mixtec codices, focusing on the tree glyph in the Codex Yuta Tnoho.
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