MEXICAN PICTURE WRITINGS OF ALEXANDER 

 VON HUMBOLDT* 



By Eduard Seler 



PREFACE 



The sixteen fragments of ancient Mexican picture writing, which 

 are reproduced in colored plates, belong to a " remarkable collection 

 made in the year 1803 in the kingdom of New Spain ", which was 

 " presented to the Royal Library by Baron Alexander von Hum- 

 boldt, in January, 1800 ". This statement is made by Friedrich 

 Wilken, on pages 155-156 of his History of the Royal Library of 

 Berlin, printed in the year 1828. Wilken mentions " thirteen frag- 

 ments of historical hieroglyphic w^riting of the Aztecs upon paper 

 made from the fiber of the Agave americana, together with a codex 

 14 feet in length belonging to it, in similar hieroglyphic writing". 

 The number does not correspond Avith the number of pieces now in 

 the library, for, according to his statement, there should be but 14. 

 The reason of this is that two of the original strips were cut in half, 

 lengthwise, and pasted on the same folio page, side by side. These 

 are the pieces shown in plates ix, x, xi, and xii, as I shall describe 

 more in detail in the course of my explanation of these pieces. With 

 the exception of fragment I, which has been preserved in its original 

 form as " the folded codex '', all the pieces are pasted upon folio 

 pages and bound together in an atlas. The title page is reproduced 

 in the heliotype atlas. It has been retained, although the historic 

 and archeologic remarks which it contains do not harmonize with 

 our i:)resent knowledge of these subjects. 



Alexander von Humboldt, who copies and describes fragment II 

 of the collection in his Vues des Cordilleres et Monuments des Peuples 

 Indigenes de I'Amerique, plate xii, under the title " Genealogie des 

 Princes d'Azcapozalco ", states that he bought the document in 

 Mexico at the public sale of the collections of Gama (the well- 

 known astronomer and author of the work Las dos Piedras, wdiose 

 full name was Antonio de Leon y Gama). Humboldt suggests that 



a Berlin, 1893. 



127 



