Mexican Manuscripts Before the Conquest
A Study By
Carol Walto n
February 29, 1984
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On the eve of the Spanish conquest, complex societies that sought
their legitimacy and identity in the past, and pursued the future through
study of that past, dominated the area now known as Mexico. Written
records were an important means of securing knowledge of the past and the
surviving Mayan and Aztec manuscripts reveal their preoccupation with time
and with their place in history. This paper, in seeking to demonstrate that
the Mexican peoples were on the verge of developing a unified system of
writing, and possibly some form of printing, will examine some of the
salient features of those manuscripts and the societies that produced them,
History was seen as cyclical, and the Mexicans believed that what had
gone before would come again, therefore, study of the past was considered a
way to gain knowledge of the future. The Mayas, who had developed a calendar
by the third or fourth century, had special hieroglyphs for figuring time.
Their prophetic charts reveal what may seem a strange failure to distinguish
between past and future) The Aztecs reportedly maintained substantia l
archives filled with codices in which they recorded the present and tried
to recapture the past. The royal Aztec historian consulted the older manu-
scripts, wrote new state histories from them, and then proceeded to burn
the earlier documents which, presumably, had outlived their usefulness.
When the aggressive Aztecs conquered a new town, they set the town archive s
on fire, demonstrating symbolically that history was to begin anew under
the sovereignity of the god Huitzilopochtli.2
Mexico-Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, was the seat of temporal and
spiritual power both before and after the Conquest. Within the Aztec empire,
which was reaching the height of its power when the Spaniards arrived i
1519, it was also the cultural center, attracting talented people from all
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over the central valley of Mexico who brought with them the arts and
skills of a wide area. N$huatl, a rich literary language, was the lingua
franca for the growing Aztec empire. At the same time, Maya civilization,
farther to the south, was on the wane, having flourished some six to
twelve hundred years previously. The remnants of this great civilization
were gradually being absorbed by the hungry Aztecs. Absorption, however,
did not mean the annihilation of Maya accomplishments. The Aztecs readily
adopted many elements of the societies they overpowered. The rich Aztec
pantheon, full of deities whose duites and functions overlapped, bore
witness to their proclivity to assimilate virtually unchanged whatever they
found useful in their daily struggle for existence.3
Religion pervaded all aspects of Mexican society, becoming increasingly
elaborate through the years among both the Mayas and Aztecs. Religious
ritual dominated the daily lives of the people, providing a way of bringin
order into an unpredictable world. Symbolism and form were highly valued.
The priests, who made up a large proportion of the upper class, were the
supreme authorities who were responsible for maintaining and extendin
religious influence. They were set off from common humanity in dress,
deportment and, most importantly, skills. It was the priests who were first
"literate". Both Mayan and Aztec script was developed as a means of keeping
priestly records and predictions; to record the passing of time, the names
and influences of the various gods, and the accumulated knowledge of th
priests/astronomers. As in early European society, all Mexican manuscripts
were produced either by priests or by people working under the direction
of the priests. Knowledge was passed on through the schools and convents
where the young people received instruction in astronomy, history and
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religious ritual. Those who showed promise as manuscript painters were
taught the application of the characters appropriate to each branch of
learning.4
The different scripts did not yet operate on a unified principle,
as they were not originally intended as a means of general communication.
Their use for other than religious purposes was a secondary development ,
founded in practicality. The writing generally functioned as a prompt t o
the memory, suggesting rather than stating explicity, and was really aux-
iliary to the oral tradition where historical accounts, hymns and poems
were learned by heart. The glyphs, as they are generally called, provided
a brief outline and the priests or chroniclers expanded them into long
discourses or recitals. The priests frequently consulted the written
records for purposes of divination. The Mayas, particularly, had reached
a high level of astronomical calculations, having accurately charted the
revolutions of the planet Venus, and had devised a system of mathematical
notation with which they were able to count back millions of years. Each
month and day was represented by specific hieroglyphs. The Aztecs also
had developed a solar calendar and, in both societies, the priests regu-
lated the festivals and seasons of sacrifice and made astrological calcu-
lations based on the written tables. By consulting special manuscripts,
called tonal matl (paper of the days) in Aztec, they customarily took the
horoscope of newborn children to determine their destiny.5
"Writing" gradually expanded beyond the strictly religious/ritualistic
realm . The secular nobility followed the priests in becoming at least
marginally literate, and it was for and by them that native literature
developed . Poetry and literature were important in both societies and both
Nahuatl and Maya are considered to be rich, expressive languages. Within the
Aztec empire, the Council of Music and the Sciences had as one of its functions
the encouragement of poetry, which it accomplished through sponsoring formal
recitations and competitions . There is some indication that the nobility also
had glyphs painted on their bodies to identify their rank and position. Both
the Mayan and Aztec rulers exacted great quantities of tribute from their
subjects. Tribute and trade were the basis of the Aztec economy and they had
need of accurate tribute lists . The tribute collectors therefore learned a
limited written vocabulary in the performance of their duites. The great
chronicler, Bernal Diaz, makes mention of an archive building where the
Aztecs kept their tribute books and notes that Cortes made use of the nav e
lists in order to learn which araes would provide the best plunder. Mer-
chants also mastered certain glyphs for the conduct of their business, thus
paralleling the spread of literacy in Europe and elsewhere. Hieroglyphic
records of trial proceedings were also kept by clerks and handed over to the
courts. These records were so accurate and informative that the Spaniards
routinely admitted them as evidence in their later court nroceedings.6
The painted symbols provided a means of disseminating information over
long distances. We know from Cortes and his follower, Bernal Diaz, that
Aztec emissaries took sketches and pictographs of the coming conquerors to
their ruler Montezuma to keep him aware of what was happening. After Cortes
had arrived at the capital, Diaz informs us that the bearer of a manuscript
would explain the meaning to Montezuma by pointing out figures on the page
as his explanation proceeded. It is clear that they were not practicing
reading as we know it. The writing did not permit the exact notation of
the spoken language, but was rather designed for summarizing events.
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Montezuma was accustomed to receiving intelligence from far away by means
of these hieroglyphic paintings that were transported by runners in relays.
One to two hundred miles a day could be covered in this way. By means of
this system, word of the approaching conquerors had reached Montezuma
years before their arrival in Mexico-Tenochtitl and had taken on a
mythical, prophetic quality by the time Cortes actually arrived.
Writing and books were clearly important to Mesoamerican culture.
Their influence was felt in all areas of life and the practice of writing
was spreading. The Nuatl language contains many words referring to book s
and writing, bearing witness to the significance of written communication
in Aztec society. Even though written records pervaded Mexican society,
only three complete pre-colonial Maya codices and no post-Conquest ones,
and about fourteen Aztec codices which are believed to predate the Conquest,
survive. The three extant Maya codices are predominantly calendric and
ritualistic, with a strong emphasis on divination, but contemporary colonial
sources inform us that a far wider range of subjects was treated in the
manuscripts, such as medicine, law, history and genealogy. Indeed, sections
of the manuscripts themselves deal with these varied subjects and point to
a depth of knowledge which must have been recorded elsewhere. The survivin
Aztec manuscripts cover a broader range of subjects and contemporar
sources also bear witness to the wealth of written material in Aztec society,
which the small number of extant codices belie!
What happened to the massive archives of which Cortes, Diaz and others
wrote and to which the surviving manuscripts occasionally allude? Part of
the answer is that many were deliberatley destroyed. The Aztecs themselves
destroyed many of their own and their neighborsmanuscripts . In addition,
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some of Cortesndian allies, in their exuberance over their victories ove r
the hated Aztec masters, are credited with having destroyed the archives at
Tenochtitl and elsewhere .9 The intentional destruction that stirs up the
most outrage today and is the most well-known, although perhaps one of the
least offensive examples in numerical terms, is revealed in the following
quotation from Fray Diego de Landa, one of the Catholic priests who set
out to convert the natives:
"We found a large number of books in these characters
and as we found nothing in which there were not to
be seen superstitions and lies of the devil, we
burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing
degree and which caused them much affliction." 10
Fray Juan de Zumirraga in 1529 had many hieroglyphic books collected and
burned and others were said to have followed his example throughout Mexico.
Many more of the books perished from neglect or were thrown away out of
ignorance after having been kept for a time as novelties. Seventeenth-
century sources allude to the existence of a far greater number of pre-
colonial manuscripts, but none of these have been found.ll
Mexican manuscripts varied in format and size. The extant Maya codices
lack boards at either end, although Landa, in referring to Maya books,
says, "They wrote their books on a large and many-folded sheet, the whole of
which they shut up within two nicely prepared boards." 12 The pages of the
Mayan codices are about twice as high as they are wide. In contrast, the
Aztec codices are bound in. highly decorated boards and the pages are gen-
erally square. In both types, pages are formed by folding a long sheet o
bark paper into leaves about eleven centimeters wide so that the whole
resembles a folded screen, much as was done with some early European books.
There is some evidence from early post-Conquest sources that the Maya
wrote on rolled-up animal skins as well as the bark paper. Some of the Aztec
manuscripts were also on paper rolls, although the majority of both Aztec
and Mayan books seem to have been in the folded screen format, with glyphs
and pictures appearing on both sides of the paper.13
There is considerable disagreement among scholars concerning the actual
writing or painting. The shortage of manuscripts to examine, the lack of a
tool such as the Rosetta stone, and the fact that some Spanish friars
encouraged the Indians to produce post-Conquest manuscripts approximating
the native style, all contribute to the difficulty of dating the codices
and deciphering their meaning accurately. Another obstacle to understanding
the writings is that context always determined the final meaning of a
glyph and more than one symbol was occasionally used to represent the same
thing. Complete accuracy in interpretation is, therefore, not possible and
those who claim to have achieved it are generally those most ignorant of
the societies that produced the codices.
Aztec writing was largely pictographic, with some use of ideograms, and
was developing toward syllabic phonetics when the Spanish Conquest inter-
rupted the process. The use of phonetics was generally restricted to the
names of individuals or places and the phonetic elements often utilized
homonyms and puns. Thus, the name of the village Otlatitl, meaning nea r
the reeds, is represented by the ideogram of a reed (otlatl) and by the
phonogram for near (clan) which was a drawing of teeth (also tlan). The
town Cimatlitlfin, meaning near a certain type of root, was a compound of
drawing of cimatl (the root) and the phonogram for tlan. A blazing temple
was always the ideographic symbol for defeat. The chronological signs were
also all ideograms. All of the glyphs were highly stylized, reflecting
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established conventions. A tongue always denoted speech and a footprint
indicated travel. Human figures often appear to us as grotesque carica-
tures because of the degree of stylization. In addition to the glyphs,
color provided another means of conveying meaning. The word tecozauhtla
was represented by a stone (tetl) upon a yellow background, the word for
yellow being cozauic. While such writing did not allow the exact reproduc-
tion of the spoken word, it was, nevertheless, highly sophisticated and
was much more than mere picture writing.14
Mayan writing followed principles similar to those of the Aztec system,
but the glyphs were far more numerous and are considered to be more sophis-
ticated. There is less of a reliance on the strictly pictographic element
and considerable use of ideograms and phonetics. The Maya glyphs tended to
be more stylized than even the Aztec (see following page for comparison)
which is seen by many as an indication that their system was closer to an
alphabetic system. The highly stylized ideograms assured greater "readability"
throughout the Mayan territory, regardless of the particular language or
dialect spoken in a certain region, much as the Chinese characters can be
read by speakers of various languages. Homonyms and metaphors were also
employed to convey meaning, as in the Aztec system. For instance, the same
word meant both "fish" and "to count" and a drawing of a fish was some-
times used to instruct the reader to begin counting. A common metaphor-
gram combined the drawing of a vampire bat and the glyph for sacrifice,
indicating a blood or human sacrifice. Some glyphic elements were used both
ideographically and phonetically. Several discrete elements often combined
to make a single glyph, there being a main sign and variable affixes for
particles of speech, such as adjectives, prepositions and suffixes. One
Day glyphs of the Maya (left) and Aztecs (right) from Eric R . Wolf, Sons o f
the Shaking Earth, p. 91 .
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common glyphic sign has been noted as a main sign in combination with
approximately eighty different arrangements of affixes. The positioning of
the affixes, either to the left of or above the main element, seems to have
been determined as much by spatial and artistic.. considerations as b
anything linguistic. Some of the glyphs, especially the calendric ones,
have two distinct forms which were used interchangeably. The Mayas apparently
despised exact repetition, making their codices more aesthetically pleasing
but even more difficult for the uniisitiated to decipher15 Left to their
normal process of assimilation, without outside interference, the Aztecs
would probably have incorporated much of the Maya system of writing into
their own, simply on the basis of praticality.
Both Maya and Aztec codices disclose the artist concern with hi s
composition, within certain prescribed guidelines. Expression of indi-
viduality was unknown in both of these highly stratified societies, yet the
painters or scribes were able to create works both of great beauty and
utility. The hieroglyphic figures in the manuscripts are crowded into a
two-dimensional world. A god or person that is considered important will
appear disproportionately larger than what around it. "Actual" size is
unimportant and it is only in post-Conquest manuscripts that perspective
is employed. Geographic symbols exist to convey geographic information
and not to provide landscape or decorative background. The glyphs are read
from right to left, left to right, right to left in a complex meander
pattern with opposite pages mirroring each other in terms of the meandering.
Figures face the flow of signs and retain always the same relationship to
the direction of reading, which sometimes produces left-profiled figure
and sometimes right-profiled figures. The unbroken flow of symbols is
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related to the native conception of time and history, with little distinction
made between past, present and future
Following the Conquest, native forms and styles were inexorably sup
planted by European styles ,
one reason that there is sometimes difficulty inidentifyinga manuscript
as pre- or post-Conquest e
change from a screenfold to a separated-page format f
symbols had to be reduced to a series of parts. Perspective an
landscape in the manuscripts are two further indications of the of
the native style. For a time, the Spaniards created a demand for the native
manuscript art t
the natives to have pictographic representations of sermons and storie
from the Bible s
where native signs were drawn and chosen so that, whenpronounced,they
approximatedthe sound of the words in Latin. The examplesof thisalpha-
bet were hastily done andreveal nothingof the true native manuscript art.
They merit study only in a linguistic . Some Spanishpriestsdid
attempt to undo the effects of the initial of manuscripts by
enlisting native artists to recreate Mexican histories in the native style.
The CodexFlorentino, organized by Bernardino de Sahag(zn,is one
example of such an effort. Yet, even though the effort to recapture some-
thing lost was sincere and carefully doneover a period of years, the result
is, at best, a useful historical document and reveals clearly the loss o
a native tradition. The NAhuatl text of the codex is written in the roman
alphabet and the native pictures are used more as to the text
than as an actual means of conveying information
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demonstrates the overall change in emphasis from a pictorial, symbolic,content
to written history supplemented by and based on pictorial representations.17
There was no way to undo the effects of a more sophisticated culture being
superimposed on a developing one. The Indians were above all else practical
and had always assimilated what they found useful, so they readily adopted
the utilitarian roman alphabet in place of their own developing system.
One can only speculate about what might have developed had the Spaniards not
arrived when they did.
Some doubt the importance of the native system of writing, believing
that it was little used and of slight influence. The scarcity of extant
manuscripts lead them to doubt the colonial reports of great storehouses
of written documents. Yet, there is a form of indirect evidence which lends
greater credence to these reports. That is the nature of the paper itself
and its overwhelming use as an item of tribute.
Over the centuries, there has been some confusion regarding the com-
position of the native paper. Pedro Mtir de Angleria, the first Europea n
to examine native books critically and analyze the paper, noted that "the
leaves of these books, upon which they write, are of the membrane of trees,
from the substance that grows beneath the upper bark ." i8 Mtir analysi s
was later confirmed in the writings of Bernal Diaz and others who had
witnessed the production of this paper. It was Dr. Francisco Hernandez, a
naturalist who visited Mexico in 1570, who first identified the tree from
which this raper was made as a fig tree. He found that many species of fig
trees existed in New Spain and all were used to produce the native paper.
The issue would never have become confused had Fray Toribio Benavente,
called Motolinia, not made the offhand and ill-informed remark that "a
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good raper is made from metl." Meti was the Aztec word for maguey or agave.
From this one remark, several generations of scholars adopted the miscon-
ception that native paper was made from the maguey talant. Modern analysis
of the rarer reveals that, in all extant examples, it was, as first stated,
produced from the inner bark of several species of fig tree. It was also
found to be coated with some form of calcium bicarbonate and is superior
to papyrus in texture and durability. Parer continues to be made to this
day by the Indians of Central America in the same way as in pre-Conquest
days, by peeling the bark off in a single sheet, soaking it, drying it,
and pounding it on a smooth surface with a striated stone beater. The
irony is that, in modern times, the people, while retaining knowledge of
the process of manufacturing paper, have forgotten one of its primary uses
as .4 means of conveying and storing information and recognize it now only
as a ceremonial device used in witchcraft.19
The Mayas referred to paper as "huun", the Aztecs as "amatl". That it
was available in large quantities we know from a variety of sources. The
stone bark beaters, essential to its making, are the single most common
item found by archaeologists today in Central America. They are found
widely dispersed throughout the area, with certain areas of heavier con-
centration. Such findings suggest that paper making was common and wide-
spread. Botany provides further evidence. The fig trees, from which the
paper is made, are also found throughout Central America and there is
some indication that, in certain areas, they were once considerably more
plentiful than they are today. It is clear from this that the raw material
for the paper was readily available throughout Mexico and that it was
exploited to such a degree in some areas that the supply was dangerously
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depleted. In addition to this objective evidence, we have the words of
the conquerors. Bernal Diaz, in recounting the Spaniardsinitial expo -
sure to the main plaza of Tlatelolco, indicates that they were amazed at
the great number of people and variety of goods that there were and notes
that "one would not be able to stop to relate all the varied things,
except raper, that in this land they call amatl." In spite of being over-
whelmed by the quantity and variety of goods he saw, Diaz takes time to
make special mention of the paper in the marketplace. But the parer that
reached the market, great in quantity though it might have been, was a
very small portion of the total amount. Only the leftovers reached the
market. The bulk of it was reserved for the priests, scribes and nobility .20
The tribute rolls provide the strongest evidence for the widespread
production and use of paper. The Codex Mendoza, which preserves for pos-
terity an Aztec tribute list, indicates that single villages were required
to supply as much as 24,000 resmas, or 480,000 sheets, annually as tribute
to Montezuma. In the Matricula de tributos, a precolonial document, it is
seen that sixteen villages were required to provide 8000 bundles or rolls
of paper every six months and another twenty-six villages were required to
provide 8000 rolls ner year. Different qualities of paper were als
demanded of different towns. By whatever reckoning, this was an enormou
amount of raper for a supposedly primitive culture to require. The tribute
system was, incidentally, rigidly enforced. Those who could not pay were
taken as slaves or sacrificial victims. The gathering of tribute wa
a communal of rt for every town. If a tribute collector were sent t
collect 8000 rolls of paper, it is safe to assume that he collected it.
Further evidence of the comprehensive use and production of paper can be
found in the Aztec place names. It was common to name a village for its
chief product and many of the towns had names which indicated that paper
was produced or utilized there. For instance, the town name Amacuilli was
a combination of amatl (raper) and cuiloa (paint). The town Cuilco .was th
place where writing was done. Amoxtlatiluyan in Nuatl means the glac e
where books are kept.21
While parer was used in great quantities for recording and storing
information, and it is in this capacity that we are primarily interested
in it, it is worthwhile to mention that paper was important to the lowliest
members of the native societies as well as to the literate upper classes.
The paper sold in the market for common consumption consisted of mere
sheets and fragments. These remnants were generally put to ritual uses.
Paper images and scraps of paper were offered as sacrifices to placate th
gods. Religious images were adorned with many different kinds of raper.
Fray Bernardino de Sahagfxn studied the popular ceremonial use of parer an
many Spanish priests found evidence of its continued use in this capacity
long after the supposed conversion of the natives. The sacred uses of paper
were not limited to the common people. It was used extensively in all
religious rituals. Human sacrifices were often dressed in paper, sometime
to represent a particular god in the ceremony. Paper also had some secular
uses among the lower classes of people as, for instance, when it was used
for a passport, stamped with certain hieroglyphs to guarantee the beare
safe passage. But the greatest use of paper was for official writings and
sacred ritual.22
Some say that the native Mexicans were on the verge of discdvering
printing with moveable type when the Spanish interrupted the process. It
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is true that the Aztecs and Mayas made extensive use of stamps and molds.
These were generally clay stamps, either flat or cylindrical. They vary
in size depending upon the surface area to be decorated. The earliest clay
stamps were molded by hand, but increased demand lead to a new technique
for mass production, the mold-made stamp. The stamps were used principally
for decorating cloth and pottery, for identifying tributes and for printing
on skin. An inked stamp was used to print on skin, cloth and paper. The
Indians had a wide variety of vegetable dyes, made from ground natural
substances mixed with oil of chia or alum, at their disposal for the stamp-
ing. The printed patterns were of all shapes, often employing geometric or
naturalistic designs. The naturalistic designs became so simplified and
stylized that they eventually appeared as conventional symbols. Since
painted images of gods on paper were used to ward off evil, it seems likely
that many of these images were produced with stamps for the mass market. It
is not known whether the natives had advanced to the stage of using some
stamps in their books. Too few of the manuscripts remain to determine the
issue definitively. Several early colonial sources give indirect evidence
to support the practice of limited stamping in books. Whether or not they
ever used the stamps in their books, they certainly used them to print on
paper and it would be a small step for them to make the connection from
scraps to folded sheets of paper.23
From this brief examination of Mexican manuscripts s
societal context, it is clear that the native peoples of this region had
developed a sophisticated means of communication and of storing information.
It was a pre-alphabetic system that was tending toward increased conven-
tionality and standardization. Their society had progressed to the point
I I
II I
Flat stamps . U is a
jaguar (Ocelotl) found in Puebla. III, showing a puma head (Mixtli), and IV,
showing a jaguar, come from Hidalgo.
From Jorge Enciso, Design Motifs of Ancient Mexico, 15. 112.
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where writing was woven into the fabric of their daily lives. They
depended increasingly upon the written documents for economic, social
and peonal reasons . While literacy had not yet reached the masses, it
was spreading through the middle class, represented by the merchants.
Paper existed in abundance, all manner of dyes had been develoned,
and the principle of reproducing an image by stamping was known. Had the
Spaniards not arrived until 1619 or 1719, the art of writing among the
native Mexicans would very likely have progressed almost to an alphabetic
stage, would have spread to a wider group of people, and stamping, the
precursor of printing, would have become widely accented in the produc-
tion of books. History has demonstrated elsewhere that availability of
a product increases demand, which,,in . The
dominant Aztec society was primitive, but as it grew it became more
sophisticated. While a mere century or two wouldn have made an appreciabl e
difference in the long run, it seems reasonable to assume that, give
enough time, the Mexicans could have develoned a system of writing and
perhaps printing to rival the roman and other alphabets in beauty an
utility .
Footnotes
J . Eric S. Thompson, A Commentary on the Dresden Codex : a Mafia
Hierogly zic Book (Philadelphia : American Philosophical Society, 1972), pp. 6-7.
J. Eric S . Thompson, The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization, 2d ed.
(Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), p. 14.
2,Hans Lenz, El Papal Indigena Mexicano (Mexico : Secretaria de
Educaci6n iiblica,1973), p. 13.
R . C. Padden, The Hummingbird and the Hawk : Conquest and Sovereignity
in the Valley of Mexico, 1501-1541 (New York : Harper and Row, 1967), p. 55.
3 Padden, D. 241.
Donald Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial
Period : the Metropolitan Schools (New Haven : Yale University Press, 1959), p. 68.
David Grant Adamson, The Ruins of Time (New York : Praeger, 1975), p. 216.
William H . Prescott, The World of the Aztecs (New York : Tudor Publishing
Co., 1970), p. 66.
Robertson, p. 27.
Jacques Soustelle, Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Spanish
Conquest, trans. by Patrick Orian (New York : Macmillan, 1961), pp. 147, 234
Thompson, Rise, p. 197.
Victor Wolfgang Von Hagen, The Aztec and Maya Panermakers (New York :
J.J. Augustin, 1944), p. 11.
Eric R. Wolf, Sons of the Shaking Earth (Chicago : University of Chicago
Press, 1972), pp. 70, 171 .
damson, p . 216.
Elizabeth P. Benson, The Maya World (New York : T. Crowell, 1967), D. 100.
Lenz,.p. 1 .
Prescott, pp. 66-72, 76.
Robertson, p. 27.
Soustelle, pp. 233-234.
Thompson, Commentary, pp. 3, 7-8, 12.
Thompson, Rise, pp. 197, 200.
Lenz, pp. 50-53.
Prescott, pp, 25, 109.
Robertson, D. 32.
Soustelle, pp. 236-237.
Thompson, Commentary, pp. 11, 13.
Von Hagen, pp. 12, 18, 75.
7Padden, p. 145.
Prescott, p.-31.
Robertson, p. 29.
Soustelle, D. 233
8Prescott, p 66.
Robertson,pp. 8, 29.
Thompson, Commentary, pp. 3, 8.
Von Hagen, pp. 6, 31.
9Lenz, p. 13.
Padden, p 52.
1QAdamson, p .
Lenz, p .
Soustelle, p .
Von Hagen, p 31.
11Thompson, Commentary,r,. 14.
12Von Hagen,pp. 32,
13Lenz, pp. 40, 42.
34.
Prescott
Thompson
Thompson
Von Hagen,
p. 67.
5, 7, 15.Commentary,pp. 3,
Rise, p 197.
69.pp. 12,
14Prescott,pp. 64-66.
Robertson,p. 10.
Soustelle,p. 233.
Von Hagen,p. 19.
15Adamson, p 216.
Robertson, pp 7, 14.
Thompson,Commentary PTA. 28-30.
Thompson,Rise, pp. 190-196, 201
16Robertson, pp. 10, 15, 20-22,65.
Thompson,Commentary,p. 19.
17Robertson, pp. 1-65.
18Von Hagen, p. 29.
19Lenz,pp. 43, 76-77, 122-135.
Thompson,Commentary,pp. 3-4.
Von Hagen, pp. 10, 27-28, 35-65, 69 .
20Lenz, p . 50 .
Thompson,Commentary,p. 15.
Von Hagen, pp . 9, 66-73, 78 .
21Lenz, pp. 38, 53-55.
Von Hagen, pp . 12-13, 66.
22Lenz, pp . 11-35 .
Von Hagen, pp . 79-82 .
23Jorge Enciso, Design Motifs of Ancient Mexico (New York : Dover
rublications, 1953), pp. iv-vii .
Lenz, pp. 45-50.
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