Codex Fejérváry-Mayer
Also known as: Fejérváry-Mayer Codex, Codex Fejervary-Mayer, FM Codex, Codex Fejérváry Mayer
Pictorial ritual almanac of the Central Mexican Borgia Group, organizing deities, day signs, and directional cosmology for divination. It encodes the 260-day count, night lords, and world axes through structured images rather than continuous prose.
Description
The Codex Fejérváry-Mayer is a pre-Conquest ritual manuscript from Central Mexico, painted in the international Mixteca-Puebla style and closely related to the Borgia Group. Its opening cosmogram presents a four-quartered world with a central fire deity, from which radiate cardinal trees, colors, and patron gods. Subsequent sections arrange the 260-day tonalpohualli into trecenas, with day signs, numerals, and deity patrons guiding prognostication for births, marriages, journeys, warfare, and agriculture. Rather than narrating mythic episodes linearly, the codex catalogs divine powers, temporal cycles, and spatial alignments, offering a portable matrix for diviners to read auspicious or perilous configurations.
Historiography
Provenance links the manuscript to the 19th-century collectors Gabriel Fejérváry and Joseph Mayer; it is now preserved in Liverpool. Scholars class it within the Borgia Group based on iconography, pigment palette, and layout. Modern studies emphasize its cosmogram, trecena patrons, and directional trees, while debates persist over precise regional workshop and pre-Conquest usage contexts. Facsimiles and digital scans have enabled systematic comparison with Codices Borgia, Cospi, and Laud.
Date Notes
Pre-Hispanic ritual screenfold of the Borgia Group; late Postclassic dating inferred from style and paleography.
Archetypes
Major Characters
- Tezcatlipoca
- Quetzalcoatl
- Tlaloc
- Xipe Totec
- Mictlantecuhtli
Myths
- World Tree and the Four Directions
- Calendar Almanacs
- Fire Drilling and New Fire
- Rain and Maize Ritual Cycles
Facts
- Classified within the Borgia Group based on style and content.
- Presents an opening world cosmogram with a central hearth and four cardinal quarters.
- Encodes the 260-day tonalpohualli with deity patrons for each trecena.
- Includes the Nine Lords of the Night and the Twenty Day Signs.
- Iconography employs standardized Mixteca-Puebla conventions and color coding for directions.
- Used as a divinatory guide rather than a continuous narrative text.
- Now housed in Liverpool; associated with collectors Fejérváry and Mayer.
- Painted on a pre-Conquest screenfold with mineral and organic pigments.