The Tonalamatl Aubin, Quetzcoatl, Tepeyollotli, and Drew University

My copy of the Tonalamatl Aubin came in a few weeks ago and I've been spending some time assimilating the images and doing some value-adding...

The library that graciously made it happen was the Drew University Library, in Madison New Jersey.

The book itself was originally published in German by Eduard Seler and is available in PDF format from the FAMSI website here.

Embarassingly, after having spent lots of time finegalling this giantly oversized book to get decent photocopies of the outline explanations - I found that they've all been scanned and look incredible - right here. Albeit in German...

Here's the original plate showing Quetzalcoatl holding a sacrificial victim in one hand and what, accoring to the translation, appears to be a turd or the symbol for "sin" in the other hand. The symbol is given as cuitlatl - excrement, sign of sin.

Here's the original from the PDF available on the FAMSI website.

And finally, here's my version of the line drawings, using Photoshop's filtering effect "Glowing Edges" to give it a LightBrite look, and then Inversing the result to get a nice outline effect.

The book I received gave the explanations for all the regalia and parephenalia depicted in the insets, which I'll transcribe here...

Chief Person: Tepeyollotli - the voice of the mountain

Facing Him: teccizti – sea snail shell

Accompanying Person: Quetzalcouatl, - the Wind God

On His Breast: eca-ilacatz-coatl – the spirally twisted ornament of the Wind God

In His Hand: cuitlatl - excrement – sign of sin

Symbol: atl-tlachinolli – spear throwing (water) and conflagration, symbolic indication of war

METRO, CUNY's Graduate Center, and a Doctoral Thesis walk into a bar...

So I decided to throw the inter-library loan department a curve ball by requesting a doctoral thesis instead of just an ordinary book.

Heres the title I was interested in...

Portraying the Mexica past : a comparison of sixteenth-century pictorial accounts of origin in Codex Azcatitlan, Codex Boturini, and Codex Aubin

Our ILL department tried to get it for me - but they said that the Graduate Center's copy was reference-only. They suggested i tried to get access to the material by requesting a yellow temporary access card from METRO the Metropolitan New York Library Council. Technically it's a referral card - which can be accessed from their website here.

So I emailed delivery@metro.org to obtain a card - and never heard back from them. So I called the number (212) 228-2320 x 14 to order - and spoke to 3 different people, the last of whom told me to call NYPL to obtain a card.

Considering I'm calling from Queens Library - this was a little insensitive - but I called him back and he gave me the number for the Queens office. Turns out the number is for my own Central Library's Interlibrary Loan Department!

Having come full circle, I requested a few cards, and got them in the next day's mail. Yellow referral card in hand - I'm off to CUNY's Graduate Center to look at this thesis! Keeping you posted!

The Codex Aubin, the British Museum, Princeton University, and Fair Use

So after tracking down the digitized version of the Codex Aubin at the British Museum - I decided to petition the institution for a higher resolution scan than the one provided for viewing on the website (to see the difference in quality).


As a quick comparison - the image on the website is 750x452 pixels with a screen resolution of 72dpi.

The scan I received from them, after assuring them I would not become rich using their images, was 2500x1775 pixels with a resolution of 300dpi. Here's the copyrighted file the British Museum sent me.

Pretty impressive and actually adequate for a careful visual inspection and printing reproduction.

Also - checked up on Princeton's copy - which is a watercolor reproduction of the original. Here's a bit from their website...

"The Princeton copy may have been made from the original and contains a page-by-page copy of the drawings in color; the transcript of the Nahuatl text, however, is not exact in regard to the page layout... Rémi Siméon (b. 1827) described a copy of the "Codex Aubin" with 79 leaves or 158 pages owned by an Italian named Chialiva. He has also noted that it has an unnumbered leaf between fols. 32 and 33. This copy was probably owned by Chialiva, as it has Italian glosses and an unnumbered leaf following fol. 32.

Sold in a Sotheby and Co. auction catalog of Nov. 9-10, 1936, as lot no. 240. It was purchased by Garrett through or from the London firm of Bernard Quaritch. Inside the outer wrapper is the inscription "R. G. Nov. 1936," which is Robert Garrett's ownership and accession mark. Garrett deposited this manuscript at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1942 at which time he described them briefly in the "Garrett Collection List No. 3." Garrett donated the item along with several other manuscripts to the Princeton University Library in 1949. "

Here's an image they make available on their website... as a side note - their reproduction and permissions page is completely terrifying.


and the corresponding low res version from the British Museum...


As for Princeton's reproduction policy - it basically looks like they waive fees (sometimes) but you have to pay up front and then have the fee refunded back to you? Not sure - here's the section...

"Reproduction fees are routinely waived for the Princeton University community, including current faculty, staff, and students; as well as the Princeton University Press, Art Museum, Index of Christian Art, and other university offices or publications. Fees are also waived for black-and-white reproduction of a few images of textual or visual materials on inside pages of a scholarly journal (either printed or electronic), in an academic monograph published in a press run of fewer than 750 copies, or in a scholarly micro-form or electronic edition. Reproduction fees in these specific cases will be waived for everyone, whether or not a member of the Princeton University Community. However, even when fees are waived, existing photoduplication charges must be paid in advance, and permission to reproduce images must be requested in writing in order to guarantee that citations are accurate. "

Survey of Mesoamerican Codices

Preconquest Pictorial Manuscripts

Cental Mexico
Tonalamatl Aubin
Codex Borbonicus

Borgia Group
Codex Borgia
Codex Cospi
Codex Fejervary-Mayer
Codex Laud
Codex Vaticanus B

Western Oaxaca
Aubin Manuscript no. 20
Codex Becker no. 1
Codex Bodley
Codex Colombino
Codex Nuttall
Codex Vienna

Maya Region
Codex Dresden
Codex Madrid
a. Coretesiano
b. Troano
Codex Paris
Codex Grolier

Pictorial Manuscripts Produced under Spanish Patronage

Cronica X Group
Duran: Historia de las Indias
Tovar: Codice Ramirez
Tovar: Historia de la Benida
Sahagun: Primeros Memoriales
Sahagun: Florentine Codex

Huitzilopochtli Group
Codex Rios
Codex Telleriano-Remensis

Magliabecchiano Group
Codex Ixtlilxochitl, pt. 1
Codex Magliabecchianno
Codice del Museo de America

Ceremonies of the 18 months
Kalendario Mexicano
The Tovar Calendar

Tribute of the Triple Alliance
Codex Mendoza pt. 2
Matricula de Tributos

Calendar Wheels
Sahagun Calendar Wheel
Veytia Calendar Wheel no. 2

Miscellaneous
Cruz: Libellus de Medicinalibus
Codex Ixtlilcochitl pt. 2
Codex Mendoza pt 1, 3
Relacion de Michoacan
Santa Cruz Map of the City and Valley of Mexico

Native Colonial Pictorial Manuscripts

Valley of Mexico
Codex Aubin
Codex Azacatitlan
Boban Calendar Wheel
Codice Boturini
Codice en Cruz
Plano en Papel de Maguey
Codex Mexicanus
Mapa Quinatzin Mapa Siguenza
Tira de Tepechpan
Mapa Tlotzin
Codice Xolotl

Central Mexico
Codices de Azoyu no. 1, 2
Mapas de Cuauhtinchan no. 1-3
Codice de Huamantla
Codice de Huichapan
Humboldt Fragment no. 1
Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca
Anales de Tula

Northen and Western Oaxaca
Lienzo Antonio de Leon
Codex Becker no. 2
Lienzo de Coixtlahuaca no. 1,2
Codice de Fernandez Leal
Lienzo de Santiago Ihuitlan
Lienzo de Santa Maria Nativitas
Codice Porfirio Diaz
Codex Selden
Selden Roll
Lienzo de Zapatepec no. 1

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!

kindle editions of the codices... i wonder...

I was planning on covering each codex with a post of its own... with links to WorldCat records and some background info for each, when i came across Amazon's kindle editions of 10 codices in digital format.





And then i did a little more digging and found the books on smashwords too... And then found it's the same guy - jason merkoski, from oscura press... He claims he's a technology evangelist, for Amazon... whats a TE anyway?


So I bought it - because the price was right and you can open Kindle books on your PC now... and then I started thinking the images looked familiar....

So i did a little more digging - and it turns out this merkoski guy had downloaded all the images for these books from a free web source, FAMSI the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, packaged them into a kindle edition, and is now selling it for .99 cents a pop and up. I guess its the american way - but is it the the native american way?


Here's the link to the Codex Tonalamatl Aubin on FAMSI - oh and the resolution is better than the kindle edition, as well.


but what about fair use and value adding - you may say? well, heres an excerpt from the "value" he's added to the hard work FAMSI did in digitizing these masterpieces and making them available to researchers.


"Any of these symbols on any of the codex pages could earn you a great tattoo – and it’s somehow a surprise that lines so bold never graved a person’s skin. And I hope that hipsters of a more feral age will start inking themselves with these living patterns. Because they are alive. They beat with blood, life, something all too familiar, and something so strangerous that you’ll never understand it."


tattooed feral hipsters? strangerous indeed!

revisiting my master's thesis... for a good cause

Having been subjected to countless inter-library loan requests, I decided I would expand on some of the scholarship I undertook at Queens College and test the limits of the inter-library loan system of the Queens Library myself.

My master's thesis was an annotated bibliography which which surveyed the print and digital facsimiles available for Pre-Columbian codices of the ancient Maya and Aztec cultures.

The bibliography sought to track the digitization of these rare and out-of-print publications, and how readily available they might be to the 21st century reader...

Here is a list of the codices covered in my annotated bibliography, to be followed by an updated version with the links to the WorldCat bibliographic records for each edition...


Aubin

Azcatitlan
Azoyu
Baranda
Barberini (Bandianus)
Becker no. I
Becker no. I / II
Bodley
Borbonicus
Borgia
Chimalpopoca
Colombino
Cospi
Dresden (Dresdensis)
Egerton (Sanchez Solis)
en Cruz
Fejervary-Mayer
Florentine
Grolier
Hall
Ixtlilxochitl
Laud
Madrid (Tro-Cortesianus)
Magliabechiano
Mariano Jimenez
Mexicanus
Osuna
Paris (Peresianus)Perez / Chilam Balam of Mani
Selden
Telleriano-Remensis
Tlatelolco
Tudela
Vaticanus A (Rios0
Vaticanus B
Vienna (Vindobonensis)
Xolotl
Zouche-Nuttall
Gomesta Manuscript
Tovar Calendar
Tonalamatl Aubin

3 minutes of fame...

i was written up in a paper for plugging our centennial celebration at the Woodside Library!

http://www.qgazette.com/news/2010-12-15/Features/Bd_2_Reviews_Porch_Renovation.html

who says outreach is dead?

it was probably a breath of fresh air to people used to the controversies of whether or not to allow a porch to be renovated on a historically landmarked building...

and who doesn't like cake? it was an easy sell...

creature from the black blogoon...

after a three year hiatus (yikes!) just needed a suitably dramatic title to make a re-appearance of my blog...

in one of my earlier posts - i had written about my experience using Queens Library's mobi pocket reader to download audio books to my computer and the rewards and difficulties inherent therein...

here i'd like to detail my experience trying to get an audiobook, mp3 song file, wav movie file and e-book to one of the ubiquitous apple ipod/itouch devices...

i am using the apple i-touch 3rd generation and as 1943 other people have commented - it rocks in terms of what it can do...

unless you're trying to do it for FREE though - in which case the "rock" is what you beat your head against as you try and squeeze functionality from it...

for the ipod - the software you need to download is the Overdrive Media Console. so.. ok - sure, just go to the App store and download and then ... but wait!! you need to have system software 4.2.1 to download overdrive... no problem just... WAIT! you need Itunes 10.1.1.4 or whatever because you havent been downloading Itunes latest version every 3 weeks like a good pod person...

so... downloaded itunes 10.1.1.4, downloaded the ipod touch system software 4.2.1, downloaded Overdrive Media Console version whatever... and was ready for anything!

Queens Library really tries when it comes to offering titles in multiple formats - but until you go through all the pain - its tough to know what downloads and what doesn't to an itouch. basically - nothing from windows media is ever downloadable to an itouch from library land. you can download audiobooks in mp3 format and you can download e-books in adobe's epub format (i believe the same format supported by the Nook ...

but that's about it... you cant download songs for free from library land, because, Steve Jobbs forbid, you don't pay for your music through the itunes store... oh and downloadable movies are a no-go as well, for probably the same reasons... so while Apple and Microsoft battle it out for our dollars - we must continue to wait for the single audo, video, and ebook platforms that wait for us in the promised land...

as for getting one of those adobe e-pub editions to the ipod... that wasn't as cut and dry as could be either... here's the site where the magic happens and that magic includes having to sign up for an Adobe ID so that you can use their digital editions software, registering your device and then going back to Queens Library with all your authorizations, security clearances, vaccinations, and hall passes so you can try and beg for an e-book (providing you haven't given up by this point)...

only to find out that there is a huge waiting period for most e-titles in Queens Library and most of the good stuff is out... so a big plus is the advance search option (for the digital media page) and for the advanced search page...

here we see the drop-down menus for formats

adobe epub (ipod friendly)

adobe pdf (sorry ipod)

mobipocket ebook (sorry again)

overdrive mp3 audiobook (youre in luck ipod)

overdrive wma audiobook (nope)

overdrive music (try itunes, buddy)

overdrive video (you hard of hearing?!)

like the old meatloaf song goes... don't be sad - cause 2 out 7 ain't bad...

so - what you'd want to do is select your format and here's the important one - select search available titles only, if you don't want to wait (and honestly who does?)... in their defense, if you have an email registered with Queens, they will notify you when your e-title becomes available so that you can come back and download it from your Digital Account.

oh and dont believe them when they say you have to download it from a computer outside the library - i downloaded my titles in house with the itouch... they just dont want you hogging their bandwith with your pesky downloads... can't make it too user friendly or else everyone would be at the library :P

Queens Library has its own crosses it makes us bear when it comes to accessibility and ease of use for their website in trying to find these titles - but that's another creature altogether...