The History of a Falsified Mesoamerican Pictorial Manuscript: The Codex Moguntiacus

Authors

  • Ron Van Meer

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18441/ind.v27i0.193-228

Keywords:

Falsified Codices, Mixtec, Mexico, Germany, 19th-20th Centuries

Abstract

Falsified pictorial manuscripts from Mesoamerica generally do not attract much scholarly attention, with the notable exception of the catalog published by Glass (1975). The Codex Moguntiacus or Codex Mainz, so named after the German city where it surfaced in the early 1950s, has long been recognized as a falsified manuscript copied from different pages of two original pictorial manuscripts: the pre-Hispanic Codex Colombino and the early-Colonial Lienzo de Tlaxcala. When Caso (1966) denounced the Mixtec-style pages of the Codex Moguntiacus as falsifications, its relationship to other existing falsified versions and copies of the Codex Colombino and the Lienzo de Tlaxcala was not clear, and there was little information available on the manuscript's history and provenience. New archival materials, along with published but poorly known literature, help clarify much of the history and provenience of the Codex Moguntiacus.

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Published

2010-01-01

Issue

Vol. 27 (2010)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2010 INDIANA

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