The gods in the Madrid Codex: An iconographic and glyphic analysis
Description
Substantial progress has been made during the past decade in our understanding of the deity figures represented in the Postclassic Maya codices. Many can now be identified with their counterparts in both the Classic and Colonial periods, whereas others can be linked to specific calendrical cycles. Research during the past century has moreover allowed the preliminary definition of relationships between various deities, although the task of quantifying these findings has just begun The goal of my study is to enrich our knowledge of the roles and relationships of the codical deities by quantifying the impressions of previous scholars. In order to address these issues, I have chosen to focus on the deities represented in the Madrid Codex (although data from the Dresden Codex were used for comparative purposes). Because it is less well known and less consistent than the other codices, the Madrid Codex was seen as providing a source of new information to be used in testing and formulating theories about the deity figures. I used a computerized database as a means of storing, accessing, and manipulating the large quantity of information contained in the manuscript. The following topics were considered: naming patterns (as expressed through name glyphs and attributives); contextual associations; and the distribution of various categories of attributes. Specific elements were examined both at the level of the individual and across deity lines, the first as a means to further refine our understanding of the roles of individual deities and the second to delineate relationships between and among the various figures. A similar approach has been applied successfully to certain sections of the Dresden and Madrid codices but never to an entire manuscript As a result of my study, I have established that what is seemingly a large pantheon of gods may actually represent various aspects or manifestations of a much smaller number of underlying deities, a pattern similar in many respects to that seen in central Mexico. My discussion focuses on defining links between individual deities, as well as identifying larger groupings, as a means of developing an explanatory model of deity relationships