The Maya Codices and Surviving Books

Four books of pre-Columbian Maya authorship, plus one early colonial book of hybrid Maya-Christian character, survive from the great library tradition of the ancient Maya. Together with the carved and painted inscriptions of the Classic-period cities, they constitute the most extensive body of indigenous American literature to come down to us from before the Spanish conquest. The codices are the principal source for the Maya calendar system in the Postclassic period, for the astronomy of the ancient Maya, and for the divinatory and ritual practices of the late pre-Hispanic and early colonial periods. In 2023, the surviving Maya codices were inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register, an event that recognized the importance of the corpus to the cultural heritage of humanity. The destruction of the rest of the books is treated on the page on what happened to most of the Maya books.

This page describes what the surviving books contain and how they came down to us. The script that fills their pages is treated on the page on Maya hieroglyphs and the glyph system; the historical context is treated on the page on Maya writing, language, and books.

What a Maya codex is

A Maya codex is a screenfold book made from a single long strip of bark paper (huun), typically 10 to 25 centimeters high and several meters long when unfolded, folded accordion-style into pages. The pages are coated with a thin layer of fine lime stucco, on which the text and accompanying images are painted in mineral and organic pigments: black from soot and charcoal, red and orange from hematite, blue and green from indigo and a Maya blue made by combining indigo with the clay palygorskite. The text is written in the same logosyllabic script that fills the Classic-period inscriptions, but with conventions specific to the book form, including the use of Isim K’uh and the personification of syllabic signs to a degree not seen on the monuments. A small number of additional codex fragments, mostly held in collections in Europe, are sometimes associated with these four books.

The codices are typically read from left to right on each page, with the reader progressing along the screenfold. Some codices are read in continuous panels that span several pages; others are organized into discrete pages that can be consulted individually for a given ritual. The text is often organized into a series of almanacs of the 260-day Tzolkin calendar, in which a particular day-sign is paired with a particular deity, ritual, or activity, and the divination is made from the position of the current day in the calendar.

The Dresden Codex

The Dresden Codex is the most important of the four surviving books and the most heavily astronomical. It is a screenfold of 39 leaves, 78 pages, on bark paper coated with stucco, painted in the bright colors characteristic of Postclassic Maya manuscripts. It was acquired in 1739 by Johann Christian Götze, the director of the Royal Library at Dresden, who purchased it in Vienna from a private collector who had reportedly obtained it in the early eighteenth century from a source in the Spanish Americas. The book is now held by the Saxon State Library (SLUB) in Dresden.

The codex is divided into two main sections. The first section (pages 1–18) contains a series of almanacs for the 260-day Tzolkin, organized by the 20 day-signs and the 13 numerical coefficients. The second section (pages 19–58) contains the famous astronomical tables, including the Venus tables (pages 24–29), the Mars tables (pages 39–44), the eclipse tables (pages 51–58), and a long series of multiplication and addition tables that are the basis for the astronomical calculations.

The Venus tables are the most famous. They give the day-of-the-Tzolkin on which the planet’s heliacal rising falls across a 481-year cycle, with corrections for the planet’s apparent motion. The tables are the principal evidence for the astronomical cycles and observations of the Maya and for the Maya astronomy of stars, planets, and eclipses. The eclipse tables give the days on which solar and lunar eclipses are possible, with a 405-lunation cycle that is one of the most accurate in the pre-modern world. The Mars tables give the synodic period of the planet and the dates on which it rises in the east. The multiplication tables (pages 58–61) are the basis for the astronomical calculations and are the earliest known use of the Maya concept of zero.

The astronomical content of the Dresden Codex was first studied systematically by Ernst Förstemann in the late nineteenth century, who recognized the Venus and eclipse tables for what they are. The codices as a whole were first published in facsimile by the Royal Library in 1880; a modern edition is that of J. Eric Thompson in the 1970s. The astronomical content is reviewed in the page on how did Maya temples align with the stars and in the page on Maya science, mathematics, and astronomy.

The Madrid Codex

The Madrid Codex, sometimes called the Tro-Cortesianus in older literature, is held by the Museo de América in Madrid. It was acquired in the nineteenth century from a private collection, but the chain of custody is uncertain. The codex is a screenfold of 56 leaves, 112 pages, on bark paper coated with stucco. It is the longest of the four surviving books, but its content is more repetitive and less spectacular than that of the Dresden.

The Madrid Codex is dominated by a long series of almanacs for the 260-day Tzolkin, organized by the 20 day-signs and the 13 numerical coefficients. The almanacs are concerned chiefly with the rituals and divinations of the Haab’ year, with particular attention to the agricultural calendar, the apiaries, the hunting and fishing seasons, and the rituals of the year-bearers. The book also contains a series of almanacs for the Wayeb’ days at the end of the Haab’ year, the five-day period of misfortune that concludes the solar year.

The Madrid Codex is a key source for the post-Classic survival of the Maya calendar and for the divinatory and ritual practices of the period. It is also the most explicit of the four books in its depiction of the ritual life of the late Maya, including the dances, the offerings, and the sacrifices that were performed at the end of the Haab’ year. The book is reviewed in detail in the modern edition by Michael D. Coe and Mark Van Stone, Reading the Maya Glyphs (2001), and in the page on how scholars read Maya hieroglyphs today.

The Paris Codex

The Paris Codex is held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. It was acquired in 1832 as part of the collection of the antiquarian Léon de Rosny, but its earlier history is uncertain. The codex is a screenfold of 24 leaves, 48 pages, on bark paper coated with stucco, with a long, complex history of restoration and rebinding.

The Paris Codex is the most ritual of the four books. It contains a long series of almanacs for the 260-day Tzolkin, organized by the 20 day-signs and the 13 numerical coefficients, with particular attention to the rituals of the year-bearers, the gods of the months, and the ceremonies of the agricultural cycle. The book also contains the famous “zodiac” pages, which depict the Maya constellations of the night sky together with the gods and animals associated with them. The pages are the only surviving depiction of the Maya zodiac in pre-Columbian art.

The Paris Codex is a key source for the post-Classic survival of the Maya calendar and for the rituals of the year-bearers, the four day-signs that give the year its name. The book is reviewed in the modern edition of Mark Van Stone, The Maya Book of the Dead: The Ceramic Codex of Late Yucatan (2008), and in the page on how scholars read Maya hieroglyphs today. The Maya constellations are treated in detail in the page on how accurate were Maya astronomical predictions.

The Grolier Codex

The Grolier Codex, also called the Maya Codex of Mexico in older literature, is the most controversial of the four surviving books. It is a screenfold of 11 leaves, 22 pages, on bark paper coated with stucco, painted in the bright colors characteristic of Postclassic Maya manuscripts. The codex was first exhibited to the public in 1971 at the Grolier Club in New York, and the catalogue of the exhibition was published the following year. The book was purchased by the Mexican government in 1973 and is now held by the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.

The authenticity of the Grolier Codex was disputed for many years. Some scholars argued that the book was a modern forgery, while others argued that it was a genuine Maya codex, but of unknown provenance. The dispute was resolved in 2001, when Michael D. Coe, in a paper for the Mesoamerican journal, argued on the basis of iconographic and radiocarbon evidence that the codex is genuine. The argument has been accepted by most scholars, and the codex is now generally considered to be a pre-Columbian book.

The Grolier Codex is dominated by a single iconographic theme: the cycle of the planet Venus. The 22 pages of the book are organized as a continuous narrative of the rise and fall of Venus as a morning star and an evening star, with the god of Venus shown at different points of the cycle. The narrative is accompanied by a series of glyphs that record the day-of-the-Tzolkin on which the events take place. The codex is a key source for the Venus cycle of the Postclassic Maya, and is treated in the page on Maya astronomical cycles and observations.

The Maya Codex of Mexico

The Maya Codex of Mexico, also called the Codex Mexicanus in some older literature, is a small screenfold book, dated by its iconography to the early sixteenth century, that is now held by the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. The codex is a hybrid product: Maya in form and iconography, but produced in a colonial context. The book is written on bark paper coated with stucco, with a series of pages that depict the divinatory calendar of the 260-day Tzolkin together with a series of almanacs for the rituals of the year.

The Maya Codex of Mexico is a key source for the survival of the Maya calendar and the divinatory practices in the early colonial period, and is the principal source for the Books of Chilam Balam tradition that survives in Yucatán in the colonial period. The book is reviewed in the modern edition of Mark Van Stone, The Maya Book of the Dead (2008), and in the page on what happened to most of the Maya books.

The destruction at Maní

The four pre-Columbian codices that survive are a small fraction of what once existed. The destruction of the rest of the books is the central event of the page on what happened to most of the Maya books, but a brief summary is appropriate here. In July 1562, the Franciscan bishop Diego de Landa gathered the indigenous books of Yucatán at the convent of San Miguel de Maní and burned them in a single act of auto-da-fé. Landa, in his own Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, claimed that the books contained “superstitions and falsehoods of the devil” and that the burning was necessary to the conversion of the Maya. The destruction is one of the great losses of pre-Columbian literature.

The four pre-Columbian books that survive are all that remain of the library tradition of the ancient Maya. The Books of Chilam Balam, the Books of the Jaguar, and the other colonial and post-colonial Maya books are partly translations of lost pre-Columbian books and partly new compositions, and they preserve some of the older traditions. The colonial tradition is treated on the page on scribes, literacy, and education in Maya society.

The UNESCO Memory of the World inscription

In 2023, the surviving Maya codices — the Dresden, Madrid, Paris, and Grolier Codices, together with the Maya Codex of Mexico — were inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register, an event that recognized the importance of the corpus to the cultural heritage of humanity. The inscription was a long-overdue recognition of the importance of the codices to the history of science, religion, and literature. The inscription was also a recognition of the importance of the codices to the modern descendants of the ancient Maya, who are the principal custodians of the traditions that the books record.

The codices are now widely available in facsimile editions and in online digital resources. The University of Texas at Austin, the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies (FAMSI), and the SLUB in Dresden have all made high-quality digital images of the books available online. The codices are also the subject of ongoing research, and the values of a small number of important signs remain uncertain.

Sources

Coe, M. D. & Van Stone, M. (2005). Reading the Maya Glyphs (2nd ed.). Thames & Hudson. — link
Houston, S. D. (2004). The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process. Cambridge University Press. — link
Martin, S. & Grube, N. (2008). Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens (2nd ed.). Thames & Hudson. — link
Boot, E. (2009). The Updated Preliminary Classic Maya–English / English–Classic Maya Vocabulary of Hieroglyphic Readings. Wayeb. — link
Knorozov, Y. V. (1952). Ancient writing of Central America. Sovetskaya Etnografiya, 3. — [link](https://www.worldcat.org/title/sovet skaia-etnografiia/oclc/60638864)
Proskouriakoff, T. (1971). Commoners in Classic Maya sculpture. In Memoirs of the Peabody Museum vol. 6. Peabody Museum, Harvard. — link