Fragmento de Nochistlan

This Mixtec manuscript fragment is called “Fragmento de Nochistlan”, after its presumed place of origin. In the period before the Spanish conquest, the Mixtecs produced complex pictorial manuscripts using a combination of pictorial and abstract characters. These screenfolds fashioned out of deerskin tell the history of the Mixtecs and provide insights into their cultural and religious practices. Today, only eight of these works survive.
The fragment displayed here is probably from a copy of an older, precolonial document from the late 16th century. The elements of the imagery, rendered in colour and arranged in two bands, relate the history of the origins of two ruling dynasties. Because of its close stylistic similarity with the Codex Becker II manuscript located in Vienna, this fragment is assumed to be the missing first page of this codex.