Codex Bodley: A Painted Chronicle from the Mixtec Highlands, Mexico (Treasures from the Bodleian Library) [Hardcover]

Maarten Jansen (Author), Gabina Aurora Perez Jimenez (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1851240950 | ISBN-13: 978-1851240951 | Publication Date: December 15, 2005

Painted shortly before the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1521, the Codex Bodley has been long recognized as one of the most important Mixtec manuscripts and a premier example of native Mixtec pictorial historiography in all its complexity. The complete manuscript of the Codex Bodley is offered here for the very first time in a single illustrated volume.

Codex Bodley explores the enormous wealth of information contained in the manuscript, which documents precolonial Mixtec genealogical relationships and historical events spanning from 900 AD to 1521. Maarten Jansen and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez provide insightful and expert commentary on the manuscript, explaining its history as they consider key characteristics of Mixtec pictography. They then provide an engaging and masterful interpretation of the manuscript's narrative, with a detailed explanatory reading of its pictograms and their significance. Accompanied by vivid and colorful illustrations, Codex Bodley is an invaluable text for scholars of precolonial Mexican history, art, and culture.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Maarten Jansen is professor of Mesoamerican archaeology and history at the University of Leiden. Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez is a research assistant and teacher of Mixtec at the University of Leiden.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (December 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1851240950
• ISBN-13: 978-1851240951
• Product Dimensions: 12.8 x 10.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #228,562 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Big Book Big Deal, February 28, 2011

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This review is from: Codex Bodley: A Painted Chronicle from the Mixtec Highlands, Mexico (Treasures from the Bodleian Library) (Hardcover)

Oh why cannot all facimile prints be as superb as this.
Text & Images of the highest quality and a work sadly
unavailable to me until the 2005 edition. It is occcasionally
a real pain to have no importaant reference library available
and to have to purchase one at a time the works of scolarship
and erudition that I find essential - not to say store all the
works. It comes in a foul format that does not lend itself to
library shelves and will therefore be consigned to the spaces
reserved for giant tomes, and will sit curiously alongside 22
volumes of the Moniteur Universelle 1788-1796, ancient Atlases,
Engraved Music and the esoteric Codex Seraphinianus. As one of
my more detailed areas of interest it will enjoy a geat deal of
use, and serve to remind me of the occasions I've stood on the
site of the burning of most of the written documentation of Mexico,
an event that has underlined my need to preserve and where possible
keep together as much material as I can aquire on all my interests.