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Maya codices (sg.: codex) are folding books written by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in Maya hieroglyphic script on Mesoamerican bark paper. The folding books are the products of professional scribes working under the patronage of deities such as the Tonsured Maize God and the Howler Monkey Gods .
The Dresden Codex is a Maya book, which was believed to be the oldest surviving book written in the Americas, dating to the 11th or 12th century. [1] However, in September 2018 it was proven that the Maya Codex of Mexico , previously known as the Grolier Codex, is, in fact, older by about a century. [ 2 ]
The Codex was first displayed at the Grolier Club in New York, hence its name. The first Mexican owner, Josué Saenz, claimed that the manuscript had been recovered from a cave in the Mexican state of Chiapas in the 1960s, along with a mosaic mask, a wooden box, a knife handle, as well as a child's sandal and a piece of rope, along with some blank pages of amate (pre-Columbian fig-bark paper).
During the ceremony on July 12, 1562, a disputed number of Maya codices (according to Landa, 27 books) and approximately 5,000 Maya cult images were burned. Only three pre-Columbian books of Maya hieroglyphics (also known as a codex) and fragments of a fourth [4] [5] [6] are known to have survived. Collectively, the works are known as the Maya ...
The covers consist of hide or wood attached to each end. The Maya codices, in contrast, are composed of a long strip of bark paper, or Amate, folded in the same accordion-like, screen-fold way as the Codex Borgia group. The most important codices were likely adorned with jaguar fur covers, although there is only documentational evidence of this.
During the 19th century, the word 'codex' became popular to designate any pictorial manuscript in the Mesoamerican tradition. In reality, pre-Columbian manuscripts are, strictly speaking, not codices, since the strict librarian usage of the word denotes manuscript books made of vellum, papyrus and other materials besides paper, that have been sewn on one side. [1]
The codex also contains astronomical tables, although fewer than those in the other three surviving Maya codices. [9] Some of the content is likely to have been copied from older Maya books. [10] Included in the codex is a description of the New Year ceremony. [11]
In common with the other two generally accepted Maya codices (the Dresden Codex and the Madrid Codex), the document is likely to have been created in Yucatán; [9] English Mayanist J. Eric S. Thompson thought it likely that the Paris Codex was painted in western Yucatán and dated to between AD 1250 and 1450. [15]