Mexica Codex

Timeline

1. 1400–1428City-states of the central Mexican highlands · Central HighlandsThe Mexica codex tradition inherited earlier Mesoamerican codex cultures (including Mixtec and Teotihuacan systems), using pictographic writing to record calendars, mythology, and history. Professional painters (tlacuilo) served temples or courts, painting and writing with mineral pigments on accordion-folded pages of deerskin or bark paper (amate), forming a highly specialized knowledge-production system.
2. 1428–1502Tenochtitlan · MexicoAfter the founding of the Triple Alliance, imperial administrative expansion spurred mass production of practical codices such as the Matrícula de Tributos; religious calendar codices (tonalamatl) and historical chronicle codices were also produced in quantity under painters trained at temple schools (calmecac), forming the core vehicle for imperial document and religious knowledge management.
3. 1511–1520Tenochtitlan and the empire's administrative centers · MexicoBetween 1511 and 1520, the imperial bureaucracy under Montezuma II continued producing tribute records, ritual calendars, and historical codices for the court, temples, and local administration. A few surviving codex fragments attributable to this period show that pictographic style and pigment recipes had reached a high degree of maturity, forming a distinctive Mexica artistic style.
4. 1521Colony of New Spain · MexicoSpanish missionaries (especially Juan de Zumárraga) burned large numbers of codices as vehicles of pagan idolatry; the vast majority of originals were permanently destroyed. About a dozen pre-Columbian Mexica and mixed codices survive, held in major European museums and the Vatican Library, forming rare primary sources for studying Aztec civilization.