Rare Aztec Manuscript Returns to Mexico on Loan After Nearly Two Centuries in France

An exhibition opened in Mexico City on Thursday displaying folios from the Codex Azcatitlan, a 16th-century manuscript recounting Aztec history, for the first time in nearly two hundred years since it left Mexico for France. The pages were loaned by France's National Library to mark 200 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

The codex uses pictograms to narrate the Aztec civilization's history, from the founding of its empire to its collapse during the Spanish conquest, which brought Christianity to the region. Vivid illustrations show feathered warriors and temple rituals, as well as the legendary migration from Aztlan to Tenochtitlan, the site that became Mexico City.

At the opening, Emilia Mendoza, a member of the Hnahnu Indigenous community that has long campaigned for the manuscript's return, described the display as a victory and a first step toward eventual restitution. Mexico's Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco said the exhibition allows people to reconnect with their collective memory and ancestral heritage.

Mexico has for years urged France to hand the codex back permanently, but France has so far declined. Since 2018, Mexico has recovered more than 16,200 cultural items from other countries. Last year, President Claudia Sheinbaum personally pressed French President Emmanuel Macron to return both the Codex Azcatitlan and another prized manuscript, the Codex Borbonicus.

The manuscript, made up of 25 sheets of European parchment, was donated to France's National Library in 1898 by the widow of a Franco-Mexican collector. It had been brought to France decades earlier by a French researcher. Both French institutions holding such codices maintain they are the rightful owners, and the dispute previously flared in 1982 when a Mexican lawyer took another related manuscript from the library and brought it back to Mexico.