Article suitable for older students

‘Codex Corner’: ordering of the world at creation - rituals of mensuration from the Mixteca in Codex Vindobonensis

24th Jun 2024

‘Codex Corner’: ordering of the world at creation - rituals of mensuration from the Mixteca in {italicCodex Vindobonensis}

Mexicolore contributor Carlos Rincón Mautner

There’s far more to the intriguing image below than first meets the eye! We’re sincerely grateful to Dr. Carlos Rincón Mautner, a cultural anthropologist and independent scholar who has taught at several U.S. universities, for explaining it for us. His most salient research interests include geoarchaeology, Mesoamerican worldviews, sacred geography, ritual cave use, iconography, interpretation of codices and lienzos, and exploring the links between archaeology, ethnohistory, and landscapes.

In this detail (picture 1) found in the preconquest Mixtec screen-fold painted manuscript known as Codex Vindobonensis or Codex Vienna, two male figures are shown measuring with a rope. Other similar depictions of male figures measuring occur on several other pages of this codex (picture 3). Though seemingly mundane, because it takes place in the section of the manuscript related to the ordering of the world following Creation, it is regarded as part of a sacred foundation ritual or inauguration (Boone 2000:96, Fig.52; Furst 1978: 241-243; Anders et al. 1992: 152-153, 159-160; Mundy 1998: 204, Fig. 5.14). For the peoples inhabiting the Mixteca of Oaxaca, Mexico, and other regions of Mesoamerica, the earth was regarded as a living divine entity. All human action required permission from the spirit owners of places and of the earth itself and favor was attained through careful observance of ritual accompanied by the provision of rich offerings.

Likely, actions, such as measuring property, would have been regarded as a sacred endeavor for it constituted a “beginning” and involved creating or building. As such, taking measurements would have been a commemorative reenacting of one of a sequence of acts related to creation. For example, locating a site suitable to build a house would have involved measuring and depositing suitable offerings. Once built, a fire would light the hearth of this domicile. Most rituals involved lighting a fire. Similarly, the scene on pages 17-18, of which this detail is a part, shows attendant priests bringing offerings and lighting a fire (picture 2).
The preferred measurement unit and/or the length of the ropes used in the Mixteca region for such purpose as depicted in the image is unknown. According to Mundy (1998:198), in postconquest documentation related to small tracts of land for individual holdings, scribes recorded estimated dimensions, or they measured the parcel directly using ropes or paces. They would draw a map of the property on paper, and its veracity was attested by witnesses.

Note regarding mensuration in early colonial times
’A limited known group of terrestrial maps of small areas was drawn to an absolute scale, using a system of mensuration and notation of measurement. Many property plans from the Valley of Mexico are carefully annotated with numerical measurements corresponding to the native quahuitl (about 2.5 m) and with measurements, thought to be fractions thereof, whose length varied from region to region.* These other measurements based on human proportions; most common was the cemmatl (meaning “one arm” or “one hand” in Nahuatl), which many scholars have found to measure about 1.67 meters, and which probably was thought of as the distance from the foot to the raised hand. Other measurements used by Nahuatl speakers included the cemmitl (one arrow), symbolized by an arrowhead, the cenyollotli (one heart), symbolized by a heart, and the omitl (one bone), symbolized by a bone. Ropes knotted at intervals were probably used to measure quahuitl.’ Excerpt from Mundy (1998: 203).

* See studies of the Oztoticpac Lands Map of ca. 1540 (and mention of the related Humboldt Fragment 4): Howard Francis Cline, “The Oztoticpac Lands Map of Texcoco, 1540,” Quarterly Journal o f the Library of Congress, 1966, 77-115, reprinted in A la Carte: Selected Papers on Maps and Atlases, compo Walter W. Ristow (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1972), 5-33, and H. R. Harvey, “The Oztoticpac Lands Map: A Reexamination,” in Land and Politics in the Valley of Mexico: A Two Thousand Year Perspective, ed. H. R. Harvey (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991), 163-86. See also Barbara J. Williams, “Mexican Pictorial Cadastral Registers: An Analysis of the Códice de Santa María Asunción and the Codex Vergara,” in Explorations in Ethnohistory: Indians of Central Mexico in the Sixteenth Century, ed. H. R. Harvey and Hanns J. Prem (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 103-25. On Aztec measuring systems, see Victor M. Castillo F., “Unidades nahuas de medida,” Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl 10 (1972): 195-223, and Lockhart, Nahuas after the Conquest, 144-46 (note 49).

References:-
• Anders, Ferdinand, Jansen, Maarten and Pérez Jiménez, Gabina Aurora (1992) Origen e Historia de los Reyes Mixtecos. Libro explicativo del llamado Códice Vindobonensis, México D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica
• Boone, Elizabeth Hill (2000) Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of Aztecs and Mixtecs. Austin: University of Texas Press
• Furst, Jill Leslie (1978) Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus I: A Commentary. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Publication # 4. Albany: State University of New York
• Mundy, Barbara E. (1998) ‘Mesoamerican Cartography, Traditional Cartography in the Americas’, in The History of Cartography, Volume Two, Book Three: Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian, and Pacific Societies, David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis (eds.) pp. 183-256, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Text: Carlos Rincón Mautner, D.V.M., PhD.
Email: ndagarji@gmail.com.

Picture sources:-
• Codex images scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition of the Codex Vindobonensis, Graz, Austria, 1974
• Pix 4 & 5: photos supplied and taken by the author.