Dresden Codex - The Oldest And Best Preserved Book Of The Maya

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Dresden Codex - The Oldest And Best Preserved Book Of The Maya21 August, 2015

None of these pre-Conquest manuscripts, record chronicles or any type of history; they instead contain astronomy, divination, rituals and calendars.MessageToEagle.com - Only four Mayan pictorial manuscripts have survived the organized book-burnings of Franciscan missionaries following the Spanish Conquest.

Codex Dresden or Codex Dresdensis is superior to the other three surviving Mayan codices. It's the oldest and best preserved book of the Maya, which was written and painted on amatl paper (made from the bark of a ficus tree), around 1200 and 1250 in the Yucatan Peninsula.

It was purchased for the Dresden court library in 1739 in Vienna, Austria as a 'Mexican book' and in 1853 it was identified as a Mayan manuscript.

Artistically the Dresden Codex is superior to the other three surviving Mayan codices.

It consists of 39 leaves written on both sides and is 3.5 m long. Page dimensions are 9 x 20.4 cm. It contains various almanacs, divination calendars, astronomical tables, ritual regulations and numerous representations of gods and calendars of Venus.

The Dresden Codex is a key document for the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs and for the study of astronomy and chronology of the Maya.




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