Codices Becker I/II

Codices Becker I/II

The screenfold books Codices “Becker I and II” were named after their former owner, the Darmstadt businessman Philipp J. Becker (1820–1895), who sold them in 1897 to the Imperial Natural History Museum, later the Museum of Ethnology and today the Weltmuseum Wien. The codices are among the few surviving manuscripts of their kind and are therefore considered to be among the most valuable ancient Mexican picture manuscripts.

Codex Becker I

As one of the most important pre-Hispanic primary sources, the Codex Becker I deals with the dynastic and political history of the Mixtec ruler Eight Deer Jaguar Claw (Iya Nacuaa Teyusi Ñaña) (1063–1115) and his wife Lady Six-Monkey (Ñuñuu Dzico-Coo-Yodzo). Readers are also provided with information about numerous relatives and family ties, as well as extraordinary military successes and political intrigues. The pictographic narrative covers a period of 21 years. We owe this precise time frame to the annual hieroglyphs that introduce each of the carefully painted sequences of pictographs arranged in a meandering pattern.
The Codex Becker I is one of three surviving fragments that tell this story and are 396.4 cm long in total. The other two parts are known as the Codex Colombino-Becker and are kept in the Museo Nacional de Anthropología in Mexico City.

Codex Becker II

The preserved Codex Becker II is also an important Mixtec document, which is a copy of a screenfold book from the first half of the 16th century. The five preserved leaves comprise a unique genealogical list of Mixtec rulers and their wives, some of whom are not found in any other preserved Mixtec genealogy. In addition, this extraordinary historical document clearly reveals a strictly patrilocal social order. Thus, all women are depicted following their husbands to their residences. However, religious content, such as the detailed descriptions of ceremonies and temple rituals, plays the main role and conveys an impression of the central position that religion occupied in the daily life of the Mixtecs.