| The state archives of the Aztec Empire (like those of the Maya and other Mesoamerican civilizations) included pictorial codices, or illustrated books, that recorded religious legends and historical events. Few codices survived the Spanish conquest. This page of the Codex Borbonicus, an early colonial-period reconstruction of an Aztec codex, illustrates an important legend involving the plumed-serpent god Quetzalcoatl. The border of the central picture shows the 260-day almanac year of the Aztec calendar, in which 20 named days (represented by figurative pictures) intermesh with the numbers 1 to 13 (represented by connected dots). |
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