Deities, Sacred Beings, and Their Feasts

Postclassic divinatory books such as the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, the Codex Borgia, and the Codex Cospi portrayed the sacred beings who presided over each of the 260 feasts as organized into two sequences, one with thirteen deities, and another with nine, commonly called “Lords of the Day” and “Lords of the Night.” Zapotec daykeepers could have followed that lead by transposing the days and their numens positionally: one day, one deity. Instead, influenced by their understanding of how alphabetic writing sorted itself into books, they chose another approach: brief cosmogonic texts at the start or end of manuals; instructions regarding observances;