Codex Nuttall

year of

A full-page multi-colored illustration in the Mixtec manuscript tradition, similar in style to the Codex Zouche-Nuttall. The page shows several figures in elaborate ceremonial clothing, wearing animal headdresses such as jaguars and birds. The lower portion includes architectural platforms or altars and two distinct year-sign symbols—interlaced "A-O" signs—accompanied by 16th-century Spanish handwritten notes. The figures are engaged in ritualized movement or interaction, typical of the narrative histories found in these manuscripts.

The Flaying of Men original: "Tlacaxipeoli," a variant of "Tlacaxipehualiztli." This was a major twenty-day festival dedicated to the god Xipe Totec ("Our Lord the Flayed One"). During this ceremony, priests wore the skins of sacrificial victims to symbolize the earth shedding its old "skin" to allow for the arrival of new vegetation and the spring rains.

A sequence of pictures from a Mesoamerican manuscript depicts various ritual scenes. At the top, a figure in ceremonial dress with a black face mask holds a staff and ritual offerings. To the bottom left, two figures interact with a central ritual bundle containing a skull, which is decorated with sacred paper banners. To the right, a red-skinned deity or sacrificial victim—associated with the festival of "The Flaying of Men"—is shown tied to a wooden frame or scaffold, likely prepared for a "gladiatorial" sacrifice or an arrow sacrifice. A multi-colored geometric pattern, known as a "stepped-fret" or xicalcoliuhqui, runs along the bottom left border.