Codex Ríos

The Codex Ríos is written on European paper and comprises 101 folios, approximately in size. The second is the tōnalpōhualli, a 260-day divinatory almanac that portrays ornately dressed deities and other supernatural entities thought to influence the fate linked to each day (12v–33r). The third section presents the Aztec calendar tables covering the years 1558 to 1619, without any pictorial content (34v–36r). The fourth is an 18-month festival calendar, accompanied by illustrations of deities and nēmontēmi symbols associated with each period (42v–51r). The fifth is a primarily ethnographic section, describing sacrificial and funerary practices (54v–57r), and concludes with portraits of Indigenous individuals (57v–61r). The sixth section comprises pictorial chronicles spanning the years 1195 to 1549, beginning with the migration from Chicomoztoc—the mythical place of origin of the Nahuatl-speaking peoples—and continuing with events in the Valley of Mexico. It includes representations of rulers, military campaigns, celestial phenomena, and other historical events (66v–94r). The seventh and final section consists of year glyphs—the visual symbols used in the Aztec calendar system to designate specific years—for the period 1562 to 1566, without accompanying text or imagery (95r–96v). == Source and authorship ==

The exact date of the Codex Ríos's production is unclear. The cursive Italian annotations in the Codex Ríos are attributed to Pedro de los Ríos, a Dominican friar active in New Spain between 1547 and 1562. He is known to have been present in Oaxaca during the Zapotec uprising of 1547, a millenarian rebellion influenced by Indigenous prophecies. Maarten Jansen, a Dutch scholar of Mesoamerican history, speculated that the Codex Ríos had been copied from the Codex Telleriano-Remensis shortly before Ríos's death in 1565 and entered the Vatican Library before 1600, where it is still preserved. An alternative theory proposes that both manuscripts derived from a now-lost Aztec codex. R. H. Barlow, an American scholar of Mesoamerican cultures, coined the name Codex Huitzilopochtli for this hypothetical source, referencing Huītzilōpōchtli, the solar deity who appears at the beginning of the migration narratives in both Codex Ríos and Codex Telleriano-Remensis. ==See also==