Dresden Codex

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For the EP by Madina Lake, see The Dresden Codex (EP). For the similarly named webcomic, see Dresden Codak.
Dresden Codex, page 49

The Dresden Codex, also known as the Codex Dresdensis, is an eleventh century book of the Yucatecan Maya of Chichén Itzá. The Mexican book is located in a museum in Dresden, Germany. Its 78 pages were folded like an accordion and are eight inches wide with an overall length of over twelve feet when laid out flat unfolded. It has hieroglyphs and refers to an original text of some three or four hundred years earlier. The codex has descriptions on customs and traditions. It also has information on mathematical astronomical tables and religious references related to calendars.

Description[edit]

Six pages (55–59, 74) of Codex B depicting eclipses (left), multiplication tables and a flood (right)

The Dresden Codex totals 78 pages on 39 double-sided sheets. It is eight inches wide with an overall length of twelve and a half feet.[1] It is exhibited at the museum of the Saxon State Library in Dresden, Germany.[2] The Dresden Codex has played a key role in the deciphering of Mayan hieroglyphs.[3] Scholars that have studied the Dresden Codex suggests that it was written between the eleventh and fourteenth-century C.E.[4][5] They believe it to be a copy of an original text of some three or four hundred years earlier.[5] It is recorded by historians as the first book written in the Americas and sometimes known as Codex Dresdensis.[6] The authentic Maya codex is one of four of the Yucatan Maya civilization of Chichén Itzá.[7] The four are named to indicate the geographical locations where they were kept originally or are kept now.[7][8]

The document is made from amatl paper ("kopó", fig-bark that has been flattened and covered with a chalk paste) and doubled in folds into an accordion-like form of folding-screen texts.[2][8] The codex of bark paper is coated with fine stucco or gesso and is eight inches (203.2 mm) high by eleven feet (3.35 m) long.[4][8] The codex was written by six different scribes using both sides.[9] They all had their own particular writing style, glyphs and subject matter.[10] The images of the codex were painted with extraordinary clarity using very fine brushes. The basic colors used for the codex – made of vegetable dyes – were red, black and the so-called Mayan blue.[11] Around 250 of the approximately 350 signs of the Dresden Codex have been decoded.[12] Most of them refer to the accompanying figures, upon which they comment in short phrases.[12] There are also numbers, consisting of bars (meaning "five"), dots (meaning "one") and stylized shells (meaning "zero").[12]

The Dresden Codex contains astronomical tables of great accuracy. It is most famous for its Lunar Series and Venus table.[5] The lunar series has intervals correlating with eclipses, while the Venus Table correlates with the apparent movements of that planet.[13] The codex also contains almanacs, astronomical and astrological tables, as well as ritual schedules.[5][14] The religious references show in a cycle of a 260-day ritual calendar the relationship between important Maya royal events to that of the phase of the moon in the zodiac.[8][14][15] The Dresden Codex also includes information on the new-year ceremony custom traditions and rain god Chaac's descriptions.[2]

History[edit]

First publication in 1811 by Humboldt who repainted five pages for his atlas

Johann Christian Götze, Director of the Royal Library at Dresden, purchased the codex from a private owner in Vienna in 1739.[14] Historians Robert Sharer and Loa Traxler speculate that the codex document was sent as a tribute to King Charles I of Spain by Hernán Cortés, governor of Mexico, since examples of Mesoamerican books and other things were sent to the king in 1519 who was then living in Vienna.[14]

In 1811, Alexander von Humboldt published five pages from the Dresden Codex in his atlas Vues des Cordillères et Monuments des Peuples Indigènes de l'Amérique. The state library of Saxony, the Royal Library in Dresden, first published the complete codex in 1848. It was not until 1853 that Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg identified the Dresden Codex as a Mayan manuscript.[16] The document of pages that fold up like an accordion has since been described "as a Mexican book."[2]

Dresden librarian Ernst Wilhelm Förstemann succeeded in the nineteenth-century to be able to decipher the calendar section of the codex, including the Maya numerals used therein.[2] He determined that these numbers, along with deities and day names, related to the Mayan calendar and the Mayan Long Count calendar.[2] An important milestone was in 1897 when subsequent decoding of the non-calendar section was assigned gods to specific glyphs by Paul Schellhas.[17] Another milestone to deciphering the codex was in the 1950s by Yuri Knorozov's phonetic approach based on the De Landa alphabet.[18]

Image[edit]

The complete Dresden Codex in the correct reading sequence (pages 1–24, 46–74, 25–45) from left to right, including empty pages

Page numbers and sequence[edit]

First page sequencing of the codex by Agostino Aglio
Correct reading order of the pages within the codex
The presentation of the Dresden Codex since 1945

Today's page numbers were assigned to the codex by Agostino Aglio when he became the first to transcribe the manuscript in 1825/26. For this, he divided the original codex into two parts, labeled Codex A and Codex B. He sequenced Codex A on the front side followed by its back side, with the same order on Codex B. Today, we 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, followed by 25–45).[19]

The librarian K. C. Falkenstein adjusted the relative position of pages for "esthetical reasons" in 1836, resulting in today's two similar length parts. While deciphering the codex, the librarian E. 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.[20] 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.[21][22]

See also[edit]

Notes and references[edit]

  1. ^ Von Hagen 1999, p. 61.
  2. ^ a b c d e f "The Dresden Codex". World Digital Library. 1200–1250. Retrieved 2013-08-21. 
  3. ^ SLUB Dresden: The Dresden Maya-Codex
  4. ^ a b Aveni 2000, p. 221.
  5. ^ a b c d Ruggles 2005, p. 134.
  6. ^ Anzovin 2000, p. 197.
  7. ^ a b Ruggles 2005, p. 133.
  8. ^ a b c d Teresi 2010, p. 96.
  9. ^ Grube 2012, p. 33.
  10. ^ Grube 2012, p. 35.
  11. ^ Grube 2012, p. 45.
  12. ^ a b c Grube 2012, p. 57.
  13. ^ Sharer 2006, p. 129.
  14. ^ a b c d Sharer 2006, p. 127.
  15. ^ Aveni 2000, p. 220.
  16. ^ Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg 1975, p. 417.
  17. ^ Förstemann 1897, p. 99.
  18. ^ Yuri V. Knorozov: Maya Hieroglyphic Codices. Translated from the Russian by S. D. Coe. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, State University of New York at Albany, Pub. No. 8, Albany, N.Y., 1982
  19. ^ Decker 1989, p. 7.
  20. ^ Sächsische Landesbibliothek 1975, pp. 32-33.
  21. ^ Sächsische Landesbibliothek 1975, p. 41.
  22. ^ Thompson 1972, p. 19.

Bibliography[edit]

  • Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (1975). Des antiquités mexicaines. In: Revue archéologique 9. Veuve Bouchard Huzard. 
  • Decker, Helmut (1989). Die Dresdner Maya-Handschrift : zur Geschichte der dresdner Maya-Handschrift. Graz : Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt. 
  • Förstemann, E. (1897). Die Göttergestalten der Maya - Handschriften. Ein mythologisches Culturbild aus dem alten America. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. 
  • Sächsische Landesbibliothek (1975). Dresden Codex: Saxon State Library Dresden (Mscr Dresd R310..) Complete facsimile edition of the Codex in their original format. History of the Dresden Maya manuscript [of], Volume 2. Academic Printing & Publishing Institute. 

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

Media related to Dresden Codex at Wikimedia Commons

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