Dresden Codex: The Oldest Surviving Book of the Americas

The Dresden Codex is a painted Maya book of the 13th century and the best-preserved of only four books known to survive from the Americas before the Spanish conquest. Made of bark paper folded like a screen, it records rituals, deities and some of the most precise astronomical calculations of the pre-modern world, including tables predicting the movements of Venus and the timing of eclipses. Today it is kept in the Saxon State and University Library in Dresden, Germany.

Maya books and their destruction

The Maya wrote on stone monuments, pottery and walls, but also in books. Scribes, who held a high social rank, painted text and images on long strips of paper made from the inner bark of fig trees, coated with a thin layer of lime plaster to give a smooth white surface. The strip was folded like an accordion and protected by wooden or leather covers.

Thousands of such books probably existed. Most were lost to the humid climate, and many were deliberately destroyed after the Spanish conquest. The best-known episode is the burning of Maya books and images at Maní in Yucatan in 1562, ordered by the Franciscan friar Diego de Landa. As a result only four pre-conquest Maya books are known: the Dresden, Madrid and Paris codices, named after the cities where they are kept, and the Maya Codex of Mexico, a fragment authenticated in 2016.

Making and dating the codex

The Dresden Codex consists of 39 leaves painted on both sides, giving 78 pages, of which 74 contain text and pictures. Unfolded, it is about 3.5 metres long; each page is about 20 centimetres tall and 9 centimetres wide. At least eight different scribes appear to have worked on it, using black and red ink and a range of blues, greens and yellows, including the famous “Maya blue”.

Specialists date the manuscript to roughly 1200–1250, in the Late Postclassic period, although published estimates range from the 11th to the 14th century. The style and language suggest it was made in the Yucatan Peninsula, possibly at or near Chichen Itza or later Mayapan. Much of its content was probably copied and updated from older books.

What the codex contains

Almanacs. Most pages contain almanacs based on the 260-day ritual calendar, the tzolk’in. They pair days with deities and predictions, covering matters such as disease, childbirth, farming and weather. The moon goddess, often linked with Ixchel, and the rain god Chaak appear many times.

The Venus table. Pages 24 and 46–50 contain the celebrated Venus table. It follows the planet through its appearances as morning star and evening star over five cycles of 584 days each, a total of 2,920 days, which equals eight solar years of 365 days. The real average Venus cycle is about 583.92 days, and the table includes correction rules that allowed Maya astronomers to keep it in step with the sky over long periods. Venus was linked with war and danger, and its first appearance as morning star was considered a time of threat.

The eclipse table. Pages 51–58 contain a table of 405 lunar months, about 33 years, marking the dates when solar eclipses were possible. It shows that Maya astronomers understood the regular intervals of six or five lunar months between eclipse seasons.

Ceremonies and the flood. Pages 25–28 describe New Year ceremonies, and page 74 shows a great flood pouring from a sky serpent, often interpreted as the destruction of the world. Other pages contain multiplication tables of large numbers used in calendar calculations, written in the Maya base-20 system with a symbol for zero.

From Yucatan to Dresden

How the codex reached Europe is unknown. A widely repeated suggestion is that it was among the objects sent by Hernán Cortés to Emperor Charles V in 1519, but there is no proof. The first secure record dates from 1739, when Johann Christian Götze, director of the Royal Library in Dresden, bought it from a private owner in Vienna for the library of the Elector of Saxony.

The codex attracted little notice for decades. In 1810 Alexander von Humboldt published five of its pages in his atlas Vues des Cordillères, the first time any part of a Maya book was printed. In the 1830s Lord Kingsborough published a complete hand-painted copy by the Italian artist Agostino Aglio in his Antiquities of Mexico.

Decipherment

The codex became central to the study of the Maya. Ernst Förstemann, the librarian in charge of it, published a photographic facsimile in 1880 and over the following years worked out its number system, the use of zero, the 260-day calendar, the Venus table and the Long Count, the Maya calendar that counts days from a fixed starting point in 3114 BC.

The codex also played a part in the decipherment of Maya writing. In 1952 the Soviet linguist Yuri Knorozov compared signs in the Maya codices with the “alphabet” recorded by Diego de Landa and showed that the script was partly phonetic, using signs for syllables. His approach, at first rejected by many Western scholars, became the basis of the decipherment achieved from the 1970s onwards.

Today, thanks to work on the codices and on thousands of inscriptions, scholars can read most Maya texts. The Dresden Codex is written in a form of Yucatec Maya, with some passages in an older literary language, and its captions name deities, offerings and outcomes in a compact, formulaic style. Each almanac typically combines a column of day signs, a row of numbers showing intervals between days, short texts of a few glyphs, and a picture of the deity in charge.

How the codex was used

The codex was not a book to be read from start to finish but a working manual for priests and diviners. A specialist could consult an almanac to find which deity governed a particular day and what it foretold for planting, hunting, illness or marriage. The astronomical tables allowed priests to anticipate dangerous times, such as the heliacal rising of Venus or possible eclipses, and to schedule rituals to protect the community.

Such knowledge gave its keepers great authority. Spanish sources from 16th-century Yucatan describe priests who kept painted books and used them for prophecy and ceremonies, a tradition that the colonial church tried to suppress.

Damage and preservation

During the Allied bombing of Dresden in February 1945, the codex was stored in a basement that flooded. Several pages suffered water damage, and some colours and glyphs were lost. Because of the earlier facsimiles, scholars can still read the damaged sections. Today the codex is displayed in a glass case in the library’s Book Museum, in dim light to protect its pigments, and the library has published a complete digital copy.

Timeline

• c. 1200–1250: The Dresden Codex is painted, probably in the Yucatan Peninsula.
• 1562: Diego de Landa orders the burning of Maya books at Maní.
• 1739: Johann Christian Götze buys the codex in Vienna for the royal library in Dresden.
• 1810: Alexander von Humboldt publishes five pages, the first Maya writing printed in Europe.
• 1831: Lord Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico reproduces the whole codex.
• 1880: Ernst Förstemann publishes a photographic facsimile and begins decoding its calendar.
• 1945, February: The codex suffers water damage during the bombing of Dresden.
• 1952: Yuri Knorozov publishes his phonetic approach to Maya writing.

Why it matters

The Dresden Codex is direct evidence of Maya science and religion in the Maya’s own words. Its Venus and eclipse tables rank among the most accurate astronomical records of the medieval world, and its survival, against the odds of climate, conquest and war, gave modern scholars the key to the Maya calendar and writing.