Читать книгу The Codex Mendoza: new insights онлайн

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I have in my cabinet, engraved on two disks of ivory, or of other wild beasts, that I have recovered from the taking of a ship that came from those countries; in the middle of the said disks can be seen certain letters made like frogs, or toads, and some other animals, both terrestrial as well as aquatic, around the said letters.

As Nicholson (1992, 5) has already noted, while Thevet’s passage describes Mexican objects from his personal collection, it is highly unlikely that one of these was the Codex Mendoza. However, in his Vrais pourtraits, Thevet does reference Mexican manuscripts that hint to the Codex Mendoza,

I will confess that the Mexicans. In order to express their ideas, use characters resembling divers terrestrial and aquatic animals and the head, feet, arms, and other limbs of a man, just as the Egyptians and Ethiopians did formerly in their hieroglyphic letters—a subject which I have treated amply in my Cosmography. Two such books I have by me, written by hand in the city of Themistitan, and filled with their characters and figures and the interpretations of them. (5)