The Codex Mendoza

The Codex Mendoza is part of a collection of documents that were produced in the earliest years of the Spanish conquest, each serving a particular purpose in preserving Aztec history and knowledge. Written and illustrated by Indigenous scholars under the administration of Spanish missionaries, a small number of codices are preserved in collections around the world.

Created around 1541, the Codex Mendoza contains a history of Aztec rulers and their conquests along with fascinating details of daily life in pre-conquest society detailed in Aztec pictograms with accompanying Spanish translations. A collaboration between the Bodleian Library at Oxford, where the codex is held, and the University of San Francisco de Quito Press, this lavishly illustrated two-book set includes a full color facsimile of the codex and essays by preeminent scholars Barbara Mundy, Mary Ellen Miller, Todd P. Olson, Carmen Fernandez-Salvador, and Daniela Bleichmar, among others. Their essays, which vividly bring this artifact to life, explore such topics as an analysis of clothing featured on different figures, the types of pigments used for color, and what the Codex Mendoza can tell us about the aftermath of Tenochtitlan in the years immediately following Spanish occupation.