An analysis of the eight-deities section in the Codex Laud
Date
1981
Authors
Ehrman, Virginia Lee
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Abstract
Among the most endearing Pre-Columbian arts are the picture books produced in Mesoamerica prior to the Spanish Conquest. The focus of the present work is one of these intriguing manuscripts, the Codex Laud (MS. Laud Misc. 678), which resides in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, England. Rather than concerning a superficial examination of the entire forty-six page screen-fold, the thesis focuses on an intensive iconographic analysis of one "chapter" within the manuscript--Folios 16-9 in which one god or goddess appears per sheet.
Following prefatory material and introductory information on the appropriate supernatural personages and the importance of the native calendar, the study commences with a comparison of the items depicted on each page of the Laud's eight-deities section with the equivalent gods and their attributes found elsewhere in the group of pre-Conquest religious manuscripts to which the Codex Laud belongs.
Since the comparison demonstrates the uniqueness of the eight-deities section and, therefore, argues for an internal examination of the Laud segment, the next method of research is to consider Folios 16-9 against one another on the basis of two sets of elements that the eight sheets have in common. This examination indicates an inherent grouping of depicted objects according to positive and negative principles.
The last procedure employed to discern the structure and meaning of Folios 16-9 is an external comparison of the day signs on each of the Laud pages with native interpretations of the calendar recorded by two sixteenth-century Spanish friars: Bernardino de Sahagún and Diego Durán. This external comparison supports the bifurcation detected in the internal investigation.
The analysis of Laud 16-9 reveals that the eight deities and their influences fluctuate be t ween evil values on Folios 15, 13, 11, and 9 and benign or neutral values on Folio 16, 14, 12, and 10. The thesis closes with remarks on the function of the eight-deities section within pre-Hispanic culture and new directions for further research.