Erasure and Reinscription in a Mesoamerican Divinatory Almanac: The Curious Case of the Codex Vaticanus B

In this paper, we discuss the life history of the codex Vaticanus B, a pre-Columbian divinatory almanac from Mexico. Several of the manuscript’s pages were covered over and repainted with new religious imagery. While the manuscript largely resembles documents attributed to Nahua peoples from central Mexico, it is primarily in its repainted pages that the codex exhibits influence from other regions. We argue that the repainted scenes contain iconography more typical of southern Puebla and Oaxaca, and that the manuscript may have been altered to bring it in line with the sensibilities of different ethno-linguistic groups as it changed hands.