TheDresden Codex is aMaya 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 theMaya Codex of Mexico, previously known as the Grolier Codex, is, in fact, older by about a century.[2] Thecodex was rediscovered in the city ofDresden, Germany, hence the book's present name. It is located in the museum of theSaxon State Library. The codex contains information relating to astronomical and astrological tables, religious references, seasons of the earth, and illness and medicine. It also includes information about conjunctions of planets and moons.[3]
The book suffered serious water damage during World War II. The pages are made ofamate, 20 centimetres (7.9 in) high, and can be foldedaccordion-style; when unfolded the codex is 3.7 metres (12 ft) long. It iswritten inMayan hieroglyphs and refers to an original text of some three or four hundred years earlier, describing local history andastronomical tables. Like all other pre-Hispanic books from Mesoamerica, theDresden Codex takes the form of a screenfold. The pages consist of a paper made from the pounded inner bark of a wild species of fig,Ficus cotinifolia,[4][5] (hu'un in Maya—a word that became semantically equivalent to “book”).[6]
TheDresden Codex contains 78 pages with decorative board covers on the front and back.[7] Most pages have writing on both sides.[7] They have a border of red paint,[8] although many have lost this framing due to age deterioration. The pages are generally divided into three sections; students of the codex have arbitrarily labeled these sectionsa,b, andc.[8] Some pages have just two horizontal sections, while one has four and another five sections.[8] The individual sections with their own theme are generally separated by a red vertical line. Sections are generally divided into two to four columns.[8]
TheDresden Codex is one of four hieroglyphicMaya codices that survived theSpanish Inquisition in theNew World.[9] Three, the Dresden,Madrid, andParis codices, are named after the city where they were ultimately rediscovered.[9][10] The fourth is theGrolier Codex, located at theGrolier Club in New York City.[11] TheDresden Codex is held by the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB Dresden, Saxon State Library) in Dresden, Germany.[12][13] The Maya codices all have about the same size pages, with a height of about 20 centimetres (7.9 in) and a width of 10 centimetres (3.9 in).[10]
The pictures andglyphs were painted by skilled craftsmen using thin brushes and vegetable dyes.[14] Black and red were the main colors used for many of the pages.[15] Some pages have detailed backgrounds in shades of yellow, green, and theMayan blue.[16] The codex was written by eight different scribes, who all had their own writing style, glyph designs, and subject matter.[17]
TheDresden Codex is described by historianJ. Eric S. Thompson as writings of the indigenous people of theYucatán Peninsula in southeasternMexico. Maya historians Peter J. Schmidt,Mercedes de la Garza, and Enrique Nalda confirm this.[18] Thompson further narrows the probable origin of theDresden Codex to the area ofChichen Itza, because certain picture symbols in the codex are only found on monuments in that location. He also argues that the astronomical tables would support this as the place of origin. Thompson claims that the people of the Yucatán Peninsula were known to have done such studies around 1200 A.D. Thompson also notes the similar ceramic designs in the Chichen Itza area which are known to have ceased in the early thirteenth century.[19] British historianClive Ruggles suggests, based on the analyses of several scholars, that theDresden Codex is a copy and was originally written between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries.[20] Thompson narrows the date closer to 1200 to 1250.[21] Maya archaeologistLinton Satterthwaite puts the date when it was made as no later than 1345.[22]
Johann Christian Götze (1692–1749), German theologian and director of theRoyal Library at Dresden, purchased the codex from a private owner in Vienna in 1739 while traveling to Italy.[13][19][23] Thompson speculates that the codex was sent as a tribute toCharles V, Holy Roman Emperor byHernán Cortés, governor of Mexico, since examples of local writings and other Maya items were sent to the king in 1519 when he was living in Vienna.[13][24] The codex was eventually catalogued into the Royal Library of Dresden in 1744, where it remained relatively obscure until the early twentieth century.[25]
Alexander von Humboldt published pages 47, 48 and 50–52 from theDresden Codex in his 1810 atlasVues des Cordillères et Monuments des Peuples Indigènes de l'Amérique, the first reproduction of any of its pages. The first copy of the codex was published byLord Kingsborough in his 1831Antiquities of Mexico. In 1828Constantine Samuel Rafinesque had identified this book as being of Maya origin based on its glyphs looking like those found atPalenque.[24][26] HistorianCyrus Thomas made a connection between the codex and the 260 year cycle ("Ahau Katun") of the Maya calendar and the 365 days in a year.[26][27][28][29][30] Ruggles shows that in the codex the Maya related their 260-day calendar to celestial bodies, especiallyVenus andMars.[31]
The codex has played a key role in the deciphering ofMayan hieroglyphs.[32] Dresden librarianErnst Wilhelm Förstemann published the first completefacsimile in 1880.[33] He deciphered the calendar section of the codex, including theMaya numerals used therein.[34] Förstemann determined that these numbers, along with deities and day names, related to theMayan calendar and theMayan Long Count calendar.[35] In the 1950sYuri Knorozov used a phonetic approach based on theDe Landa alphabet for decoding the codex, which was followed up in the 1980s by other scholars that did additional deciphering based on this concept.[36]
Paul Schellhas in 1897 and 1904 assigned letters to gods for specific glyphs since they had several possible names. For example God D could be Hunab Ku Itzam Na among several other names and God A could be Cizin (god of death) among others.[37] The Schellhas system of assigning letters for the gods represented by certain glyphs as a noncommittal system was adopted by later researchers of Maya codices.[38]
TheDresden Codex contains accurate astronomical tables,[39] which are recognized by students of the codex for its detailedVenus tables andlunar tables.[40] The lunar series has intervals correlating with eclipses, while the Venus tables correlate with the movements of the planet Venus.[39] The codex also contains astrological tables and ritual schedules.[20][41] The religious references show in a cycle of a 260-day ritual calendar the important Maya royal events.[42] The codex also includes information on the Maya new-year ceremony tradition.[43] The rain godChaac is represented 134 times.[44]
Italian artist and engraverAgostino Aglio, starting in 1826, became the first to transcribe and illustrate the codex completely for Irish antiquarianLord Kingsborough, who published it in his nine volumes ofAntiquities of Mexico in 1831–48. The codex then had some damage due to handling, sunlight, and moisture.
It received direct water damage that was significantly destructive, from being kept in a flooded basement during the World War IIbombing of Dresden in February 1945.[33] German historian G. Zimmerman later noted that the damage was extreme on pages 2, 4, 24, 28, 34, 38, 71 and 72.[8] Certain details of the glyph images have been lost because of this. The damage is apparent when the current codex is compared to the Kingsborough copies of 1831–48 and the Förstemann facsimile editions from 1880 and 1892.[45][46]
Today's page numbers were assigned by Aglio when he became the first to transcribe the manuscript in 1825–26. For this, he divided the original codex into two parts, labeledCodex A andCodex B. He sequencedCodex A on the front side followed by its back side, with the same order onCodex B.
Today, historians such as Helmut Deckert and Ferdinand Anders understand that a codex reading should traverse the complete front side followed by the complete back side of the manuscript, i.e., pages 1–24 followed by 46–74 and 25–45.[47] The librarian K. C. Falkenstein adjusted the relative position of pages for “esthetical reasons” in 1836, resulting in today's two similar length parts.[48] While deciphering the codex, the librarianE. W. Förstemann noticed an error in Aglio's page assignment of the sheets 1/45 and 2/44, so he correctly reassigned Aglio's pages 44 and 45 to become pages 1 and 2.[49] The reversal of the sheets 6/40, 7/39 and 8/38 is due to an error when the sheets were returned to their protective glass cabinet after drying from the water damage due to the bombing of Dresden in 1945.[50]
.And Soviet linguistics expert Yuri Knorozov discovered that de Landa's alphabet was actually a phonetic syllabary.
It dates from the eleventh or twelfth century, making it the earliest surviving book from the Americas.
Media related toDresden Codex at Wikimedia Commons
