The Codex Nuttall

by Mildred Boyd

    It isn’t really a codex and Zelia Nuttall was neither it’s creator, it’s discoverer nor it’s owner, though her scholarly interest did result in it’s first publication. The Codex Nuttall is made of deerhide, pieced together to make one continuous strip over 40 feet long and roughly 6-1/2 inches high, then folded fan-wise into 10 inch sections to form a compact, 98 page “book”. Both sides were coated with fine lime plaster and 88 of the pages were painted with the vivid little scenes and date glyphs in bright colors.
    Such “screen folds” contained the religious texts and historical records of the pre-Columbians, and they bear no resemblance to the illuminated and bound codices of Medieval Europe.
    Like all the surviving pre-conquest documents, the early history of this one is obscure. It may have been one of the “...two books such as the Indians have” that were mentioned by Cortez in his first letter as forming part of the treasure being shipped to the Emperor Charles Fifth. If so, it was little valued and even less understood. After being judged as “...probably intended for the amusement of children but...so foolish it would bore them,” the document spent centuries in an obscure Dominican monastery in Florence.
    It was as a gift from an Italian friend that the manuscript came into the possession of the English Lord Zouche and later into the custody of the British Museum. Until 1898, when Zelia Nuttall received permission to make the copy which was published in 1902 by the Peabody Museum, this important historical document was virtually unknown.

More.....