226 UNIT 2 COLONIAL MESOAMERICA
Figure 6.3 Codex Laud.A page from the marriage prognostication tables. Reprinted with
permission from Codex Laud.Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1966,
verso of folio 11.contains a male-female pair of deities, one of the sacred world-trees that held up the
sky, and a sacred bird representing the heavens. Additional trees stand at the inter-
cardinal points. The day signs of the 260-day ritual calendar are arranged about the
perimeter. Five of the twenty signs are associated with each of the four directions; 260
small circles represent the individual days in the count. In such a manner, time and
space, history and geography, were united in a single vision of creation.
The second group of surviving codices comes from the Mixtec civilization in
what is now the Mexican state of Oaxaca. There are six of these, and they are known,
after one of their number, as the Nuttall Group. Two of these manuscripts, the Codex
Nuttalland the Codex Vienna,are believed to have been sent by Hernán Cortés to
Emperor Charles V. Two others, the Codex Colombinoand the Codex Becker I,remained
in Mixtec hands until they were used as evidence in legal suits over land rights, the
Colombinoin 1717 and the Beckerin 1852. Another, the Codex Selden,continued to be
added to during the Colonial period, up to about 1560.