Article suitable for older students

‘Codex Corner’: sound track

11th Jan 2025

A simple speech mark shows Mexica god Xolotl speaking; Codex Borbonicus pl. 4 (detail)

Native Mexican books are replete with memory symbols, designed to elicit active responses from the (specialist) reader, in line with the latter’s cosmovision and perception of the world; these triggers of ‘sensorial memory’ can be images, sounds, textures, smells... The information contained in the codices needed to be ‘decoded’ by being spoken, sung and - above all - FELT. Here, we tentatively explore these ideas, based on the work of researcher Sandra Amelia Cruz Rivera (2019) (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore.)

Far from being an inert, cold, impersonal medium simply to be ‘read’, the content of pre-invasion Mesoamerican codices was designed to be performed, brought alive, animated in every sense. What’s more, in interpreting the books, human senses could be fused, with one sense eliciting another: an image, for instance, might evoke the memory of a taste, a smell, a scent (Cruz Rivera calls this, in Spanish, sinestesia).
The references to sounds in the codices range from simple - such as Xolotl’s speech scroll, from the Codex Borbonicus, shown in the main picture, above, or a bird’s song (pic 1, top) - to complex (see below); their purpose? To show speech, music, song, poetry, animal sounds, shouts, sighs, laments...

Composite sound signs contain additional iconographic elements such as jewels, flowers, maize plants and other hieroglyphs. The Codex Borbonicus has two striking examples (pic 2): on the left we see a seated god impersonator singing and playing a huehuetl field or war drum. Following two simple speech scrolls emanating from his mouth, a large and beautiful scroll is depicted, decorated with eight identical glyphs representing verse/text/script, atop of which stands a prominent, colourful, jewel-studded flower (song) symbol.
On the right, a hunting scene features a trapped wild animal emitting a trumpet-like howl (the red-and-white scroll) embellished with the glyph of a large conch shell.

Complex ‘sound volutes’ may involve associations not at first sight visible or obvious. In a section on rituals in the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, the pulque deity Patécatl is shown with a large, dark-coloured sound sign leaving his mouth, bearing several glyphs representing stars and a fang (pic 3, top). Whist this may refer to a ritual of the night, Cruz Rivera suggests that some kind of secret is being revealed.
In the Codex Borgia (pic 3, bottom), a serpent emits a strange, two-part scroll: one is coloured orange-brown and is dotted with spots resembling those of a jaguar’s pelt, the other is similar but painted black. This pairing brings to mind the myth of the creation of the fifth sun, in which Sun and Moon are created by a jaguar and an eagle leaping into a great fire. This suggests the disfrasismo (kenning or metaphorical pairing) in quauhtli in ocelotl (‘eagle-jaguar’) meaning warrior.

One final example completes this brief investigation into codex sound signs - that of a howl or deep wail. In this case, an elaborate, dual, two-coloured scroll emerges from the mouth of an individual - it’s unclear if human (perhaps a warrior who has perished in battle) or deity (possibly the humble god Nanahuatzin, who leapt into a fire to become the Sun) - being ritually sacrificed and cooked in a huge fiery pot. Cruz Rivera categorises the sign as a choquilitzatzi, or cry of agony.

Source:-
• Cruz Rivera, Sandra Amelia (2019) ‘La imagen del sonido en códices prehispánicos del centro de México: una propuesta metodológica’, Pasado Abierto, Revista del CEHis no. 9, Mar del Plata, enero-junio 2019.

Picture sources:-
• Main & pic 2: images mages scanned from our own copy of the Codex Borbonicus, ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1974
• Pix 1 (top) & 3 (top): images scanned from our own copy of the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1971
• Pic 1 (bottom): image scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition of the Codex Laud, Graz, Austria, 1966
• Pix 3 (bottom) & 4: images scanned from The Codex Borgia - A Full-Colour Restoration of the Ancient Mexican Manuscript by Gisele Díaz and Alan Rodgers, Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1993.