COLLECTION NAME:
Maya Art and Architecture
Record
Filename:
Quetzalcoatl_Ehacatl.jpg
Identifier:
Quetzalcoatl_Ehacatl
Creator:
Unknown
Style or Period:
Pre-Columbian
City or Region:
The Vatican
Site:
Apostolic Library
Country:
Rome
Language:
Spanish
Subject:
Dieties
Subject:
Codex Borgia
Subject:
codex
Description:
Quetzalcoatl is a Mesoamerican deity whose name comes from the Nahuatl language and means "feathered serpent". The worship of a feathered serpent is first documented in Teotihuacan in the first century BCE or first century CE. That period lies within the Late Preclassic to Early Classic period (400 BCE to 600 CE) of Mesoamerican chronology, and veneration of the figure appears to have spread throughout Mesoamerica by the Late Classic (600 to 900 AD). The Codex Borgia or Codex Yoalli Eh��_��__��_��__catl is a Meso-American ritual and divinatory manuscript. It is generally believed to have been written before the Spanish conquest of Mexico somewhere within what is now southern or western Puebla. The codex is made of animal skins folded into 39 sheets. Each sheet is a square 27 cm by 27 cm (11x11 inches), for a total length of nearly 11 meters (35 feet). All but the end sheets are painted on both sides, providing 76 pages. The codex is read from right to left. Pages 29��_��__��_��__��_��__46 are oriented perpendicular to the rest of the codex. The top of this section is the right side of page 29, and the scenes are read from top to bottom. So the reader must rotate the manuscript 90 degrees in order to view the codex correctly. The Codex Borgia is organized into a screen-fold. Single sheets of the hide are attached as a long strip and then folded back and forth. Images were painted on both sides and painted over with a white gesso. Stiffened leather are used as end pieces by gluing the first and last strips in order to create a cover. The edges of the pages are overlapped and glued together, making the sheet edges hardly visible under the white gesso finish. The gesso creates a stiff, smooth, white finished surface that preserves the images below. The Codex Borgia features eighteen pages of an astronomical narrative that shows the yearlong alteration of the rainy and dry season.
