The Mexican Picture Writings of Alexander Von Humboldt in The
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There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924097634970 THE MEXICAN PICTURE WRITINGS OF ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT IN THE ROYAL LIBRARY AT BERLIN EDUARD SELER 123 CONTENTS » Page Preface '. 127 Fragment I, plates i-v 188 Fragment II, plate vi .* 154 Fragments III and IV, plates vii and viii 176 Fragment \', plate ix 187 Fragment VI, plate x 190 Fragment VII, plate xi 196 Fragment VIII, plate xii 300 Fragments IX, plate x; X, XI, and XII, plates xiii, xiv (A and B) xv 209 Fragment XIII, plate xvi 312 Fragment XIV, plate xvii 217 Fragment XV, plate xviii 221 Fragment XVI, plate xix 221 Conclusion 228 125 MEXICAN PICTURE WRITINGS OE ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT" By Eduard Seler PKEFACE The sixteen fragments of ancient Mexican picture writing, which are reproduced in colored plates, belong to a " remarkable collection made in the year 1803 in the kingdom of New Spain ", which was "presented to the Koyal Library by Baron Alexander von Hum- boldt, in January, 1806 ". This statement is made by Friedrich Wilken, on pages 155-156 of his History of the Royal Library of Berlin, printed in the year 1828. Wilken mentions " thirteen frag- ments of historical hieroglyphic writing of the Aztecs upon paper made from the fiber of the Agave americana, together with a codex 14 feet in length belonging to it, in similar hieroglyphic writing ". The number does not correspond with the number of pieces now in the library, for, according to his statement, there should be but 14. The reason of this is that two of the original strips were cut in half, lengthwise, and pasted on the same folio page, side by side. These are the pieces shown in plates ix, x, xi, and xii, as I shall describe more in detail in the course of my explanation of these pieces. With the exception of fragment I, which has been preserved in its original form as " the folded codex ", all the pieces are pasted upon folio pages and bound together in an atlas. The title page is reproduced in the heliotype atlas. It has been retained, although the historic and archeologic remarks which it contains do not harmonize with our present knowledge of these subjects. Alexander von Humboldt, who copies and describes fragment II of the collection in his Vues des Cordilleres et Monuments des Peuples Indigenes de I'Amerique, plate xii, under the title " Genealogie des Princes d'Azpapozalco ", states that he bought the document in Mexico at the public sale of the collections of Gama (the well- known astronomer and author of the work Las dos Piedras, whose full name was Antonio de Leon y Gama). Humboldt suggests that iBerlin, 1893. 127 128 BTTBEAXT OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 28 it may formerly have belonged to the " Museo Indiano " of the Milanese historian and antiquary, Cavaliere Lorenzo Boturini Ber- naducci. Since various other of these fragments, as I shall here- after show, certainly did belong to Boturini's collection, and we know that Gama actually knew of, used, and possessed a great part of Boturini's collection, we may venture to conjecture that the other pieces of the collection brought together by Alexander von Humboldt were acquired in the same waj'. I'ragments II and VI were published and described by von Hum- boldt in the above-mentioned illustrated work, Vues des Cordilleres et Monuments des Peuples Indigenes de I'Amerique. Only a small part of fragment II, however, was reproduced, and that without the explanatory notes which accompany it, and neither of the two frag- ments was quite perfectly and correctly reproduced. Fragments I and II have also appeared in colors in the second volume of Kings- borough's great work, Mexican Antiquities. Fragment II. however, is without the explanatory notes. Close examination readily shows that neither is by any means accurately nor exactly reproduced, either in drawing or color. The Avhole collection was exhibited in the year 1888 in the rooms of the Royal Library, with the other manuscripts and printed matter relating to the history and languages of America, during the sessions of the International Americanist Congress at Berlin. The four hundredth anniversary of the day on which Columbus first trod the soil of the New World gave the managers of the Royal Library the desired opportunity to render the entire col- lection more accessible for general use by multiplying it, photograph- ically at least, as their means did not then admit of reproduction in colors. To me was intrusted the honorable task of accompanying those pages with a few words of explanation, for which I herewith express my thanks to the administration of the Royal Library. FRAGMENT I This fragment (plates ii to vi) is a strip of agave paper 4.3 m. long and somewhat more than 8 cm. wide, painted on one side and then folded fourteen times, thus making a book about a foot in length. The painted side is divided lengthwise by vertical lines into 5 strips, and by other lines cutting the former at right angles into 75 sections. I will designate the longitudinal strips from right to left by the let- ii ters A, B, c, D, and E (plates to vi) , and the subdivisions beginning at the bottom—for there the reading begins—by the figures 1 to 75. The lower end is imperfect. It is obvious that there was still another i-^ection below, which was painted in similar fashion and possibly formed the end of an entire missing row. The upper end looks as if it had been sharply cut off. As the entries of material objects BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 28 PLATE II MEXICAN PAINTING-HUMBOLDT FRAGMENT I, PART 1 ; SBLBK] MEXICAN PICTURE WRITINGS FRAGMENT I 129 (columns c to e) cease in the fifth section from the top, it may be assumed that this was the end of the strip, and that it was not further written upon because, for some reason, the entries ceased altogether. In column b four pictures follow one another in regular repetition. These I will designate by a, b, c, and d, proceeding from below upward. Thus we have a in sections 1, 5, 9, 13, etc., b in sections 2, 6, 10, 14, etc., c in 3, 7, 11, 15, etc., d in 4, 8, 12, 16, etc. The picture a, plate ii, shows a dark-colored face with a large round eye, a row of long tusks, and over the lips an angular blue stripe curved downward and rolled up at the ends. This is the familiar face of the rain, thunder, and mountain god of the Mexi- cans—Tlaloc by name—a face the features of which were supposed to be produced originally by the coils of two snakes, their mouths, with long fangs in the upper jaw, meeting in the middle of the upper lip."^ The face of the rain god here stands for his chief festival, the sixth (according to the usual reckoning) of the eighteen annual fes- tivals of the Mexicans, known as Etzalqualiztli, that is, " when they eat bean food " (beans cooked with whole kernels of maize)." The second of the four pictures (b, column b) is a white strip painted over with black acute-angled figures, wound about with a red band, from which two yellow tufts protrude at the top.