Codex Borbonicus

What it is

A long strip of amate bark paper carrying the twenty trecenas, each on its own page, presided over by its patron energy and accompanied by the Lords of the Day and of the Night. The feasts of the solar year follow.

It is among the most complete and best preserved codices there are on the count of days.

And a third section: the eighteen veintenas of the solar year.

Pre-Hispanic or not

Here there is an open argument: some hold it pre-Hispanic, others made in the first colonial years. The case for the second is a set of Spanish glosses added later, but glosses can postdate the painting.

The app cites it as «pre-Hispanic or very early» rather than taking a side.

Its origin is traced through its feasts: six of them would be regional variants.

Where it is

In the Library of the National Assembly, in Paris. It takes its name from the Palais Bourbon, the seat of that assembly.

This is where the patron energy this app gives each trecena comes from, checked against the facsimile. With a limit of the codex itself: its first two plates are lost — trecenas 1 and 2 are read in the Tonalámatl Aubin.

How a codex is read

A codex is not read like a book. The painter — the tlacuilo, «writer-painter» — used glyphs, and sometimes the rebus principle: a sign that sounds like the word it means rather than depicting it.

And the direction is not fixed either. Some pages are read boustrophedon, as the ox ploughs, back and forth, changing sense with every line.

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