Abstract: The Legend of Lord Eight Deer: An Iliad of Ancient Mexico

Lecturer: John Pohl

A featured work of art in the exhibition is the 15th century painted pictographic manuscript called Codex Zouche-Nuttall from Oaxaca, Mexico.  Preserved in the British Museum and never before exhibited outside that institution, it portrays the saga of a great Mixtec warlord who conquered much of southern Mexico between A.D. 1063 and 1115.   Displayed like a storyboard on the walls of royal palaces and performed by court poets, the stories of political intrigue, marriages, and murders would rival the works of Sophocles or Shakespeare.