Mexica

Mexica
Author: Norman Spinrad
Publisher: Little Brown GBR
Total Pages: 506
Release: 2005
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780316726047

The year is 1531. In a small hut on the slopes of the volcano Popocateptl, scholar and poet Alvaro de Sevilla reflects on his extraordinary life. For Alvaro was one of the small army of conquistadors who, some years earlier, set out to conquer an empire... Hernando Cortes is a man driven by his desire for gold and glory - in the name of his God and his country. Having been proclaimed a reincarnation of the god Quetzacoatl, the Feathered Serpent, shortly after his arrival in the New World, Cortes takes advantage of the hatred for the central state of Mexica - and their superstition - to force his way to the capital city. There he will meet Montezuma, the Aztec Emperor, who at first welcomes the conquistadors to his city, showering them with gold. But it is an encounter between two civilisations - two worlds - that can only end in chaos, death and destruction.

Fifth Sun

Fifth Sun
Author: Camilla Townsend
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190673060

Fifth Sun offers a comprehensive history of the Aztecs, spanning the period before conquest to a century after the conquest, based on rarely-used Nahuatl-language sources written by the indigenous people.

Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos

Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos
Author: Kay Almere Read
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 1998-07-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780253113917

This introduction to the imaginative world of the Mexica (or Aztec) explores sacrifice in the richly textured life of 16th-century Mexico. Kay Almere Read describes a universe in which every object was timed by a given lifespan and in which sacrifice was the mechanism by which time functioned. This book makes a convincing case for what sacrifice meant religiously and for how it came to be that human sacrifice of staggering proportions could be accepted, matter-of-factly, by the Mexica people.

The Aztec Kings

The Aztec Kings
Author: Susan D. Gillespie
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2016-10-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0816534780

Winner of the Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Book Award from the American Society for Ethnohistory, The Aztec Kings is the first major study to take into account the Aztec cyclical conception of time and treat indigenous historical traditions as symbolic statements in narrative form. Susan D. Gillespie focuses on the dynastic history of the Mexica of Tenochtitlan. By demonstrating that most of Aztec history is nonliteral, she sheds new light on Aztec culture and on the function of history in society. By relating the cyclical structure of Aztec dynastic history to similar traditions of African and Polynesian peoples, she introduces a broader perspective on the function of history in society and on how and why history must change.

The Natural History of the Soul in Ancient Mexico

The Natural History of the Soul in Ancient Mexico
Author: Jill Leslie McKeever Furst
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1995-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780300072600

A richly illustrated look at basic Precolumbian beliefs among ancient Mesoamerican peoples about life and death, body and soul. Drawing on linguistic, ethnographic, and iconographic sources, art historian Jill McKeever Furst argues that the Mexica turned not to mental or linguistic constructions for verifying ideas about the soul, but to what they experienced through the senses. 32 illustrations.

Handbook to Life in the Aztec World

Handbook to Life in the Aztec World
Author: Manuel Aguilar-Moreno
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195330838

Describes daily life in the Aztec world, including coverage of geography, foods, trades, arts, games, wars, political systems, class structure, religious practices, trading networks, writings, architecture and science.

The Aztecs

The Aztecs
Author: Michael E. Smith
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1118257197

The Aztecs brings to life one of the best-known indigenous civilizations of the Americas in a vivid, comprehensive account of the ancient Aztecs. A thorough examination of Aztec origins and civilization including religion, science, and thought Incorporates the latest archaeological excavations and research into explanations of the Spanish conquest and the continuity of Aztec culture in Central Mexico Expanded coverage includes key topics such as writing, music, royal tombs, and Aztec predictions of the end of the world

Portraying the Aztec Past

Portraying the Aztec Past
Author: Angela Herren Rajagopalan
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2018-12-12
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1477316078

During the period of Aztec expansion and empire (ca. 1325–1525), scribes of high social standing used a pictographic writing system to paint hundreds of manuscripts detailing myriad aspects of life, including historical, calendric, and religious information. Following the Spanish conquest, native and mestizo tlacuiloque (artist-scribes) of the sixteenth century continued to use pre-Hispanic pictorial writing systems to record information about native culture. Three of these manuscripts—Codex Boturini, Codex Azcatitlan, and Codex Aubin—document the origin and migration of the Mexica people, one of several indigenous groups often collectively referred to as “Aztec.” In Portraying the Aztec Past, Angela Herren Rajagopalan offers a thorough study of these closely linked manuscripts, articulating their narrative and formal connections and examining differences in format, style, and communicative strategies. Through analyses that focus on the materials, stylistic traits, facture, and narrative qualities of the codices, she places these annals in their historical and social contexts. Her work adds to our understanding of the production and function of these manuscripts and explores how Mexica identity is presented and framed after the conquest.

The Codex Mexicanus

The Codex Mexicanus
Author: Lori Boornazian Diel
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2018-12-12
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1477316752

Winner, Roland H. Bainton Book Prize, The Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, 2019 Some sixty years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, a group of Nahua intellectuals in Mexico City set about compiling an extensive book of miscellanea, which was recorded in pictorial form with alphabetic texts in Nahuatl clarifying some imagery or adding new information altogether. This manuscript, known as the Codex Mexicanus, includes records pertaining to the Aztec and Christian calendars, European medical astrology, a genealogy of the Tenochca royal house, and an annals history of pre-conquest Tenochtitlan and early colonial Mexico City, among other topics. Though filled with intriguing information, the Mexicanus has long defied a comprehensive scholarly analysis, surely due to its disparate contents. In this pathfinding volume, Lori Boornazian Diel presents the first thorough study of the entire Codex Mexicanus that considers its varied contents in a holistic manner. She provides an authoritative reading of the Mexicanus’s contents and explains what its creation and use reveal about native reactions to and negotiations of colonial rule in Mexico City. Diel makes sense of the codex by revealing how its miscellaneous contents find counterparts in Spanish books called Reportorios de los tiempos. Based on the medieval almanac tradition, Reportorios contain vast assortments of information related to the issue of time, as does the Mexicanus. Diel masterfully demonstrates that, just as Reportorios were used as guides to living in early modern Spain, likewise the Codex Mexicanus provided its Nahua audience a guide to living in colonial New Spain.