This is a fanciful rendition of the Spanish _conquistador_ Hernán Cortés (d. 1547), dressed as an Ancient Roman centurion. The imagery is unusual for a number of reasons: first, Cortés was the main player that brought about the destruction of the Aztec Empire, which happened over a thousand years past Ancient Rome’s heyday. The artist was perhaps going for an old-timey military conquering vibe. Second, the creator of this illustration drew it in a codex that was not European — See the boxes that frame Cortés, with their symbolic imagery and various dots? That’s the traditional Aztec pictographic way of recounting information (the dots often refer to days of the week), and these pictographs are accompanied by a gloss in the Aztec Nahuatl language. (Fun fact: coyote and avocado are Nahuatl-derived words!)
The third reason this Cortés image is so distinct is because it has been newly discovered by scholars! Part of three Aztec codices unveiled in March of 2024, this codex (like the other two) comes from the late 1500 — early 1600s, shortly after the Spanish takeover of the former Aztec Empire. The three documents are called “the Codices of Sand Andrés Tetepilco”, and had been in the possession of a local family in Mexico who decided to transfer their ownership to the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico. Some of the documents were written on bark paper, and they used local plants to supply the colorful inks.
The codices will be studied extensively for the new written information as well as for their linguistic importance.
Sources: _Smithsonian Magazine_ “Mexican government acquires rare centuries-old Aztec manuscripts,” Julia Binswanger, March 27, 2024. “Archaeologists recover 16th-century Aztec codices of San Andres Tetepilco” Dario Radley _Archaeology News Online Magazine_ March 22, 2024. https://publications.newberry.org, “The Aztecs and the making of colonial Mexico: the pictorial books of the Aztecs”
