Part 2 Preparing the New Fire

part 2 Preparing the New Fire ⸪ Maarten Jansen and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez - 9789004340527 Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 11:27:26PM via free access <UN> Maarten Jansen and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez - 9789004340527 Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 11:27:26PM via free access chapter 5 The Foundation of a Dynasty In the previous section we concluded that Tomb 7 of Monte Albán belonged to a Postclassic ceremonial centre, represented on the carved bones in the tomb itself and in scenes in the Ñuu Dzaui (Mixtec) codices as a Temple of Jewels or Precious Temple. In relation to this temple, Tomb 7 became a focal point for ritual activity: its location at a sacred place of the past made it a chosen point of contact with the ancestors. In a similar manner the ruins of Classic Teotihuacan remained a site of religious importance in Postclassic times. The early colonial Relación Geográfica de Teotihuacan recalls that before the Span- ish conquest the Aztec ruler Moctezuma used to go there every twenty days with a group of priests to make offerings at the temple pyramids around the Plaza of the Moon.1 The Precious Temple appears also among the structures that conformed the archetypical ceremonial centre in Tollan, where the priest-king Topiltzin Quet- zalcoatl performed his rituals. Friar Bernardino de Sahagún registers names such as ‘house of jade’, ‘house of gold’ and ‘house of turquoise’ (chalchiuhcalli, teocuitlacalli, and xiuhcalli in Nahuatl).2 Evidently such a sanctuary was part of the religious canon and cultural memory of Mesoamerica. Codex Tonindeye (Nuttall) describes the Temple of Jewels as a place where staffs of office were put into the ground and guarded. Clearly the connection with the founding fathers of the Ñuu Dzaui world transmitted power to these emblems of rulership. One is the Tnucucua or quincunx staff (symbol of the four directions); the other contains the Xipe bundle, a set of sticks bound together, which evokes the collective ancestors. The meaning of the staffs, at least on one level, therefore seems to be the connection to the principle of order in space (the four directions and the centre) and in time (the connection with the ancestors). It is this synchronic and diachronic power, then, that was revitalised at the temple. But the Temple of Jewels itself contained another important ritual element: the plank and fire drill that constituted the instrument for making fire. It indicates that the ritual of kindling a New Fire was part of the temple’s liturgy. It was Lord 9 Wind ‘Quetzalcoatl’, the Ñuu Dzaui culture hero, who had in- troduced this practice in primordial time. Codex Yuta Tnoho (Vindobonensis) 1 Relación Geográfica de Teotihuacan (Acuña 1985/86, ii: 236). 2 See the commentary on Codex Vaticanus A by Anders and Jansen (1996: 70–75). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi �0.��63/97890043405Maarten Jansen and�7_007 Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez - 9789004340527 Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 11:27:26PM via free access <UN> 298 chapter 5 contains a whole series of such ceremonies, which included the ritual cleans- ing of the land, the naming of the different landscape features in each region, the measuring of areas for construction, and the building of temples to respect the numinous power of the earth.3 Codex Yuta Tnoho (Vindobonensis), p. 48, shows how Lord 9 Wind ‘Quetzal- coatl’ came down from the Place of Heaven carrying the quincunx staff (Tnu- cucua) and related ceremonial items, such as the roll of paper, the shield and arrows. Then he brought the ‘water of heaven’ (i.e. rain, fertility, life) to the different places of the Ñuu Dzaui world (op. cit., p. 47 ff.), while at the same time establishing the sacred dates for the different place in the region. Working together with the spirits of nature, he made the founding fathers and mothers of the Ñuu Dzaui dynasties come forth from the sacred mother ceiba tree in the valley of Yuta Tnoho (Apoala) (op. cit., pp. 38–37). And he actually founded their realms by initiating the building of temples and by kindling the New Fire (op. cit., p. 32). In this process of distributing water and fire (the cold and the hot as basic elements), Lord 9 Wind ceremonially cleansed the natural and cultural landscapes and gave names to places and people (op. cit., pp. 31–30). This ceremony marked the foundation of the dynasties and village-states (‘mat, throne’) in the different parts of Ñuu Dzaui. Similarly, Codex Tonindeye (Nuttall), pp. 15–19, connects the New Fire instrument with the staffs that symbolise the power of the dynasty and with the sacred bundle of Quetzalcoatl (which seems to have contained the flint knife from which this deity had been born). Looking at the way in which such ceremonial items are treated in Mesoamerican communities today, we become aware that the New Fire instrument and the staff are much more than just objects; they are to be understood as symbols with agency, i.e. as living beings. These ceremonial elements are located in specific temples, such as a temple surrounded by the Plumed Serpent. Below that temple we often see a dark place, dedicated to the earth, with a skull motif that may refer to the goddess called Lady 9 Grass by the Ñuu Dzaui and Cihuacoatl by the Nahuas. In a religious sense the kindled fire (light) recalls the first sunrise and the creation or unveiling of the landscape by the culture hero. In a political sense it indicates the foundation of the dynasty. And as a metaphor it stands for the unfolding of human life, history and cognition. The New Fire ceremony therefore marks the relationship of human life with the primordial time (darkness) of the gods. It expresses and celebrates the cycle of life-death-life. Thereby it set the time for the ceremonial centre and for the congregation as a whole. 3 Jansen and Pérez Jiménez 2011: 361–368. Maarten Jansen and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez - 9789004340527 Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 11:27:26PM via free access <UN> The Foundation Of A Dynasty 299 Certainly this also implied a cyclical commemoration and re-enactment of the foundation ceremony on specific significant days of the calendar. The Temple of Jewels (and by extension Tomb 7) at Monte Albán was a site for this ritual. In order to understand the meaning of this association we will examine here a specific case of the New Fire ceremony: the kindling of fire connected with a bundle ritual as part of the foundation of a Toltec dynasty. This will lead us to examine painted manuscripts from the area of Coixtlauaca, an important centre in Western Oaxaca, closely related to the Ñuu Dzaui (Mix- tec) world. The intriguing references to the Toltec presence in that area also make us pursue the track of a crucial personage of Postclassic historiography: the Toltec priest-ruler Quetzalcoatl. 1 Pictorial Manuscripts from the Coixtlahuaca Valley The New Fire ceremony occupies a central place in a large painted scroll, an early-colonial manuscript, which has been preserved in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The roll is composed of seven sheets of native Mexican paper (am- ate), glued together and forming a strip 38 cm wide and 335 cm long. The strip has been folded in the middle along the whole length, but is otherwise in rela- tively good condition. The analysis of the contents suggests that the sequence of paintings forms a complete chapter, but the comparison with other related manuscripts demonstrates that this chapter is only the beginning of a much longer text. Therefore, the roll may either be incomplete or it may have been the first of a set of other ‘volumes’. The roll came to the Bodleian Library in 1659 as part of the bequest of the well-known scholar (jurist, historian, philologist) and parliamentarian John Selden (1584–1654). In his library it had been catalogued as Rotulus Hieroglyph- icus (‘hieroglyphic roll’) without documentation as to its original provenience. In the Bodleian Library’s catalogue of 1697 it was registered as Rotula conti- nens Hieroglyphica Mexicana (‘roll containing Mexican hieroglyphs’) with the library number Arch.Seld.A72(3) = S.C.3207. Since then it has been known as the Selden Roll. In an effort to find names for these documents that are more in accordance with their cultural provenance we will call it here Roll of the New Fire, after its central scene. The manuscript has been published in a good black and white facsimile by Burland (1955) and in less clear colour photos by Corona Nuñez (1964–67, ii). The commentaries in both editions belong to the period after Alfonso Caso’s breakthrough in the identification and interpretation of the Ñuu Dzaui codices. In this context Caso also started to study the corpus to which the Selden Maarten Jansen and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez - 9789004340527 Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 11:27:26PM via free access <UN> 300 chapter 5 Roll belongs, which is stylistically related to but geographically clearly different from the Ñuu Dzaui manuscripts. An important first effort was his study of the so-called Fragment Gómez de Orozco or Doremberg (published in 1954), which is particularly relevant as this fragment starts with the same scene as the Selden Roll: an image of heaven with nine layers, accompanied by several dates. In his commentary Caso pointed out this parallel and also noted that the Selden Roll has detailed elements in common with a large painted cloth preserved in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, and known at the time as the Lienzo Antonio de León, Codex Rickards or Lienzo of Tlapiltepec Papalutla and Miltepec.4 References to this manuscript in the works of early Oaxacan historians Manuel Martínez Gracida and Abraham Castellanos allowed Ross Parmenter (1961) to identify this lienzo as originally coming from Tlapiltepec in the Coixtlahuaca Valley.

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