Codex Aubin is an illustrated Aztec manuscript from the 16th–17th centuries. in the Nahuatl language. The peculiarity of the 81-sheet manuscript is that it is written on European paper in letters of the Latin alphabet. The text is divided into two parts, each describing a specific period in Aztec history. The first records are dated 1576, the last one was made in 1607.
The first part deals with the resettlement of the Aztecs from their ancestral home, Aztlan, to Mexico, where they founded Tenochtitlan. The second part covers the period of European conquest, the Massacre at the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan in 1520, and the smallpox epidemic. The entire story presented covers a period of 440 years. In the codex you can find a mention of the arrival of the conquistador Hernán Cortés, in addition, at the very end the rulers of Tenochtitlan since its founding are listed.
It is unknown where the codex was located immediately after it was written. In the 18th century, the book ended up in the collection of the Italian historian and antiquarian Lorenzo Boturini. The researcher was interested in the fate of the Spanish colonies in North America, collected ancient texts, and traveled to New Spain. In 1744, Boturini was arrested for entering New Spain without permission, and the collection was confiscated. In the 19th century, the codex was acquired by collector and paleographer Joseph Aubin, after whom the manuscript is named. The next owner of the codex was the French bookseller Jules de Porte, and he, in turn, already sold it to the British Museum.
In the 19th–20th centuries. The manuscript was rewritten several times, and some fragments were partially translated. And in 1893, Joseph Aubin published a lithographic reproduction. These copies are now kept in European and Mexican collections. Several years ago, the translation of all text into English and decoding of images and pictograms began.
