Tira de Tepechpan

The Tira de Tepechpan is a sixteenth-century visual calendar that illustrates events occurring in Tepechpan and Mexico-Tenochtitlan from 1 Rabbit (1298) to 13 Flint (1596). It combines a Nahua form of pictorial writing with Latin alphabet annotations. This page illustrates the foundation of Tepechpan in 1334—the result of the union of Chichimeca and Colhua communities. The polished, colorful images are representative of the manuscript’s initial pages. The quality deteriorates in later folios, likely a result of the social collapse brought by colonial epidemics.

Image Source

• Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Mexicain 13–14 (Tira de Tepechpan). ca. 1596, fol. 3r. Courtesy of gallica.bnf.fr / BnF.

Further Reading

• Noguez, Xavier. Tira de Tepechpan: Códice colonial procedente del Valle de México. Biblioteca Enciclopédica del Estado de México 64–65. Mexico City: Biblioteca Enciclopédica del Estado de México, 1978.