French researchers try to date the Codex Borbonicus, one of the most treasured Mesoamerican historical documents
Detail from the Codex Borbonicus – the goddess Chalchiuhtlicue, symbol of Venus.
It was May 1826 and France was celebrating the first anniversary of
the coronation of Charles X. French troops had occupied Spain;
Mexico
had gained its independence and Latin America was in turmoil. But,
sitting in his office in the library of the National Assembly,
deputy-curator Pierre-Paul Druon was feeling pleased. For the past 30
years this former Benedictine monk had labored to track down rare works
and add them to the 12,000 items inherited from the French Revolution
and now entrusted to parliament. Never before had he had the opportunity
to acquire such a treasure, even if the source of the Nahuatl
manuscript he purchased for 1,300 gold francs at auction was unknown and
two of its pages were missing. He was, nevertheless, convinced of its
worth.The document, in its present state, is 14 meters long, comprising 36
fan-folded sheets, each 39 sq cm. It details the cycles of two
calendars, one divinatory, the other solar, used by the Aztecs before
the
Spanish conquest led by Hernán Cortés in 1519. It represents several hundred brightly colored figures and creatures, each of particular significance.
Here “lords of the night” and “numbers”, accompanied by glyphs, “day
signs” and ritual birds, surround the deities who preside over the 20
13-day weeks in the “book of destinies”. There Cipactonal and his wife,
Oxomoco, the first couple on Earth, celebrate the festival of the “new
fire”, which marks the moment when the two systems coincide, every 52
years. Then come the religious ceremonies associated with the 18 20-day
months that make up a year.
Here again, priests wearing flayed human skins, desiccated hands
falling loose at their wrists, present scepters and shields to
sacrificial victims who will be skinned to hail new growth. Elsewhere
they dance round the ritual xocotl tree, in an end-of-year offering to
the flowers.
This extraordinary document, referred to as the
Codex Borbonicus
in reference to the Palais Bourbon, seat of the lower house of the
French parliament, is one of France’s national treasures. It is one of
six documents – an original parchment dating from the trial of Joan of
Arc, a ninth-century Bible, two Rousseau manuscripts and the
Serment du Jeu de Paume
(Tennis Court oath) – that have not been allowed out of the country
since the 1960s. Does it predate Cortés? Or, as suggested by the
catalog of a 2008 exhibition at Quai Branly, is it a colonial-era
manuscript, resulting from the clash between Meso-American and western
cultures?
Now, 188 years after the manuscript’s first public appearance,
specialists from the Natural History Museum in Paris, the National
Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the arts ministry are trying
to answer that question.
In May 2013 an “exceptional” decision by MPs authorized the experts
to analyze the materials used in the Codex in an attempt to date it.
This is a technical and scientific challenge in itself, because the
research must be carried out in a strong room under the parliament, at a
constant temperature of 18C.
Detail from the Codex Borbonicus, showing Quetzalcoatl, the mythical Aztec feather serpent.
Interest in the Codex goes beyond conservation. Pre-Columbian
documents describing the beliefs and rites of Mesoamerican
civilizations, between central Mexico and Costa Rica, are extremely
rare. Very few survived the Spanish inquisition. From 1525, in order to
speed up conversion of the “Indians”, their temples were demolished and
their “idolatrous” books banned. In 1562, for example, 27 “demoniac”
documents were burned at Mani, Yucatan, and their owners put to death.According to historical accounts, when Cortés and his companions
entered the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan on 8 November 1519, they found
libraries containing thousands of works on many subjects. Now only about
20 pre-Columbian Mesoamerican documents remain. Only five of these,
belonging to the Borgia group, are categorically genuine. The majority
of them have been shown to be of Mayan or Mixtecan origin. None were
produced by the Aztec empire or in its main language, Nahuatl.
What does remain are roughly 500 “colonial” manuscripts, some drafted by
tlacuilos,
or indigenous scribes, between the 16th and 18th century on the
instructions of the authorities in New Spain. The aim was to gain a
better understanding of the history and customs of the native peoples
the Spanish sought to govern and convert. Some of these documents – such
as the Florentine Codex begun in 1547 under the supervision of the
Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagún – were designed with the
help of scholars familiar with the Nahuatl language and were real
encyclopedias. They were packed with information on the Aztecs, the
“people of the Sun” who came from the north and for 200 years leading up
to 1521 took possession of the Mexican plateau. They took their
spiritual lead from Huitzilopochtli (held by some to mean “left-handed
hummingbird”), a deity who demanded that his people wage war to provide
human sacrifices, thus feeding the sun with blood to sustain its daily
journey.
Where does the Codex Borbonicus fit in? The commonly accepted explanation is that the French stole it from the library at the
Escorial palace,
outside Madrid, when Napoleon’s army invaded Spain in 1808. But there
is no proof of this and the year of its purchase by the French
parliament, 1826, coincides with unrest in Latin America, which may
explain why the manuscript came up for sale in Europe.
Analysis of the Codex’s contents is more helpful. According to
several specialists, such as anthropologist Ernest Théodore Hamy who
made a facsimile copy in 1899, it is pre-Columbian and may date back to
1507. But other experts maintain that it is a copy of a pre-colonial
original. They cite its size – larger than other known codices, which
were designed to be portable – the grid pattern on some pages and empty
spaces set aside for comments in Spanish. Some go so far as to claim
that a particular scene represents the crucifixion. If it is a copy, it
would have been produced just after the Spanish conquest, but using
traditional techniques. Pointing out the differences in style and color
between the first and second part of the codex, some commentators have
suggested that it is a composite work, either finished after the
conquest or a marriage of two distinct works.
However, on two points there is consensus: the Codex Borbonicus was
the work of Aztecs, perhaps even based in their capital; and it is
essential to an understanding of how all the Mesoamerican civilizations
of that period represented time.
Jointly funded by the
Foundation for Cultural Heritage Sciences
(FSP) and France’s National Assembly, the new research program hopes
to find out whether the whole manuscript was produced using traditional
methods. If not, it may contain traces of materials imported from Europe
by the Spanish. “It is impossible to date the Codex directly,” says
Fabien Pottier, a PhD student working on the subject. “We’re interested
in knowing whether it was made just before or just after Cortés arrived
in 1519, which means a window of between 20 and 40 years at the most.
None of the known dating techniques, even using carbon-14, is accurate
enough for that.”
Instead, the Patrimex system is being used. There is only one in
France
and it all fits into a van and is mobile for “analyzing monuments or
objects which cannot be moved”, says FSP general-secretary Emmanuel
Poirault.
Work started on the manuscript at the beginning of September. The
Patrimex hyperspectral imaging system operates in a series of spectral
bands ranging from the visible to infra-red and will photograph the
Codex in 900 bands. With digital processing, researchers should be able
to discover the characteristic spectrum of each organic dye and the
paper itself, probably
amate. This was made with fig-tree bark
coated with gypsum. By comparing individual pages, and others made using
traditional techniques but artificially aged in a laboratory, the
scientists hope to settle the question of European input.
“Of course people could always say that even if they had no part in
making the document itself, the Spanish influenced the process simply by
being present,” says José Contel, from Toulouse University. Would this
be a recognition of failure? “Not at all,” says Elodie Dupey Garcia, a
CNRS researcher currently in Mexico City. “In the last few years we have
begun to realize that in Mesoamerican civilizations there is a symbolic
side to every technique, over and above its practical value,” she
explains. “They deliberately used pigments obtained from hard-to-find
plants or animals (such as cochineal for scarlet, or Mayan indigo)
despite having ready access to a whole range of mineral dyes. Organic
pigments have a special texture and brilliance that suited the aesthetic
standards of the Aztecs – a beautiful color should be bright. So
confirming that the Codex Borbonicus, the only Aztec manuscript we have
that might be pre-Columbian, was really made in the traditional way
would be really great news. Much more important than finding out it was
produced just before or just after Cortés reached Mexico.”
Unfortunately
for the lower classes, there were many points in history in which a
populace was at the mercy of an unstable or even insane sovereign ruler.
Due to the frequency with which royal families intermarried, mental and
physical defects were more common than in normal populations. These
were wildly different times, in which life wasn't generally valued as it
is today, and the jealousy and competition for the throne between royal
family members led to betrayals and murders.
