Codex Aubin

So my copy of the Codex Aubin came in through the inter-library loan system - thumbs up Queens Library!

Here are some of the technical details. First the actual book...

Codex Aubin. Historia de la nación mexicana. Reproducción a todo color del Códice de 1576. Madrid: J. Porrua Turanzas, 1963. Commentary in Spanish by Charles Dibble. SPE F 1219 C6368.

My copy came from Syracuse University... Thanks guys, you rock! Wikipedia almost gets it right... A Codex consisting of eighty-one leaves of European paper bound in red leather and guarded out. A pictorial Nahuatl chronicle covering the years 1168-1608 and 1595-96, with an addition for 1597-1607. Begins with the departure from Aztlan and includes the dynastic history of Tenochtitlan and colonial events.

It was most likely begun in 1576 and it is possible that Fray Diego Durán supervised its preparation, since it was published in 1867 as "Historia de las Indias de Nueva-España y isles de Tierra Firme", listing Durán as the author.

Among other topics, the Aubin Codex has a native description of the massacre at the temple in Tenochtitlan in 1520. Also called "Manuscrito de 1576" (“The Manuscript of 1576”), this codex is held by the British Museum in London. A copy of the original is held at the Princeton University library in the Robert Garrett Collection there. The fully digitized version is available at the British Museum’s website - the downloadable images are 72dpi with a pretty decent size of 750x447 pixels

But don't try to just search Codex Aubin from their home page because you get no results... curious.

Here are 2 images which give you a sense of the limitations of reproduction. First, a scanned image from the book I received, a hand-colored lithograph by Charles E Dibble made from the original.



And then a photograph of the original provided by the British Museum.



So where did Wikipedia get it wrong? Their description above notes 81 leaves (with the temple image scans being found on plate 81) - but the book I received goes on for an additional 77 pages and includes a year by year pictorial history, beginning in 1521 and ending in 1607.

The British Museum's website does not include all of these additional plates either, but rather ends on plate 89 with the years 1526 - 1535. Heres the last plate they make available Plate 88 - 89 (1526 - 1535).

As a closing note, I also read in the Handbook of the Middle American Indians vol. 14 that the Dibble reproductions I obtained are not without errors, and shouldn't be used for scholarly research, as they are inadequate.

They instead suggest the photographs made by William E. Gates which are available at... find out next post!