Codex Egerton 2895
(Codex Waecker Götter)

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his edition of the Codex Egerton 2895 is the first to be made of the complete manuscript by colour photography. The earlier edition of Antonio Penafiel (Monumentos del arte mexicano antiguo, Berlin, 1890) was made by coloured lithography from drawings of Domingo Carral. That edition, unfortunately, did not transcribe the important glosses on the manuscript. These glosses, in European writing but the Mixtec language, are now available and will constitute in invaluable source for the growing interest in things Mixtec ... This edition of the Codex Egerton and that of the Codex Vienna belong as important items in any anthropological library, especially one aiming at giving adequate coverage of Middle America. They are examples of the native American tradition of writing and of recording history in terms of genealogical ordering – the Codex Vienna from the pre-Hispanic period and the Egerton from the early colonial.

They are thus important examples of how the non-European languages of the New World were ‘written’ in the native pictorial tradition; the written glosses of the Codex Egeron are examples of the recording of Mixtec in European writing. They are, additionally, fine examples of two different periods in the history of the Indian art, with the Codex Egerton showing the beginnings of the process of acculturation and the Codex Vienna the pure native tradition.”

Donald Robertson (Tulane University), in
AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, 68 (1966) 3, S. 798

Codex Egerton 2895 (also known under the names Codex Waecker Götter and Codex Sánchez Solís) was previously published by Penafiel in 1890, but without the inscriptions in the Mixtec language which constitute an important feature of the old document.

The MS was painted within a generation after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. There is no detail in the workmanship of the whole document which is not Mixtec, except for the handwriting in European letters.

The style of painting is unusually rich. Among the surviving Mixtec codices this document is unique, because in no other comparable work we find a genealogical document in which each of the major pairs in the history occupies a full page. The general style of painting is somewhat like that of Codex Bodley 2858, but the artist has taken advantage of the larger space available to produce more richly detailed representations. The document is much worn, and a small part of it has been deliberately erased.. However, it appears to remain substantially complete as will be seen from the description which accompanies the facsimile.

C. A. Burland, London

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