This volume offers new calendrical models and methodologies for reading, dating, and interpreting the general significance of the Madrid Codex. The longest of the surviving Maya codices, this manuscript includes texts and images painted by scribes conversant in Maya hieroglyphic writing, a written means of communication practiced by Maya elites from the second to the fifteenth centuries A.D. Some scholars have recently argued that the Madrid Codex originated in the Petén region of Guatemala and postdates European contact. The contributors to this volume challenge that view by demonstrating convincingly that it originated in northern Yucatán and was painted in the Pre-Columbian era. In addition, several contributors reveal provocative connections among the Madrid and Borgia group of codices from Central Mexico. Contributors include: Harvey M. Bricker, Victoria R. Bricker, John F. Chuchiak IV, Christine L. Hernández, Bryan R. Just, Merideth Paxton, and John Pohl. Additional support for this publication was generously provided by the Eugene M. Kayden Fund at the University of Colorado.
Re-Creating Primordial Time offers a new perspective on the Maya codices, documenting the extensive use of creation mythology and foundational rituals in the hieroglyphic texts and iconography of these important manuscripts. Focusing on both pre-Columbian codices and early colonial creation accounts, Vail and Hernández show that in spite of significant cultural change during the Postclassic and Colonial periods, the mythological traditions reveal significant continuity, beginning as far back as the Classic period. Remarkable similarities exist within the Maya tradition, even as new mythologies were introduced through contact with the Gulf Coast region and highland central Mexico. Vail and Hernández analyze the extant Maya codices within the context of later literary sources such as the Books of Chilam Balam, the Popol Vuh, and the Códice Chimalpopoca to present numerous examples highlighting the relationship among creation mythology, rituals, and lore. Compiling and comparing Maya creation mythology with that of the Borgia codices from highland central Mexico, Re-Creating Primordial Time is a significant contribution to the field of Mesoamerican studies and will be of interest to scholars of archaeology, linguistics, epigraphy, and comparative religions alike.
Other sections cover weather almanacs; the influence of God C, also known as k'u; the four yearbearers with their thirteen numbers; the Maya spirit entities, including sky gods and earth or death gods; and the Maya constellations.
Ancient Mayan Message (Dresden Codex facsimile) This third edition features a full-color reproduction of The Dresden Codex that has been carefully crafted by the author Olga Judith Najarro Ibarra, to re-create the original Mayan manuscript, an archaeological and historical treasure. This facsimile should benefit in the research, study and consultation of this mysterious Mayan hieroglyphic writing. Ms. Judith Najarro has dedicated many years to hand-drawing and coloring the intricate blends of minute details that encompass the complex and fascinating Mayan hieroglyphic writing in order to ensure precision, accuracy of proportions, levels and orientation to her excellent art work that contains 78 plates, except four of them that are completely blurry. This exciting new edition is based on a comparison between several pre-WWII facsimiles of The Dresden Codex, when the codex was in better conditions. The original manuscript is still in fair shape, but several plates have suffered damage from bombings, fires, floods, mildew etc., and now are blurry; also, the plates are no longer connected in quite the same way. Originally, all of the plates were attached to each other forming a single strip of some 3.5 meters long when stretched out from their accordion folds. The original sequence of the plates were: pages 1-24 followed by 46-74, followed by 25-45. According to some historians the original manuscript was found in one of the largest Mayan cities and was supposedly sent to Europe around 1519. In 1744, it was acquired by The Royal Library of Dresden Germany, to which it owes its name. Many researchers agree that The Codex deals with: Astronomy, mathematics, astrological tables of the planets, the moon, conjunctions of solar bodies, cosmogonic theories, religion, agriculture, magic and mythology. The Mayas used tree bark for the preparation of their papyrus on which they drew and painted their colored hieroglyphs and pictures, as the highest expression of their knowledge and pictographic art. The Dresden Codex (Dresdensis Codex) is without a doubt, the most important pre-Hispanic document that has been preserved throughout the centuries. It is the oldest known book written in the Americas; of the hundreds of books that were used in Meso-America before the Spanish conquest, it is one of only 15 that have survived to the present day. This third edition facsimile elaborated by Judith Najarro, is a perfect replica of The Dresden Codex, and should inspire scientists, archaeologists, astronomers, mathematicians, historians, native peoples and the world at-large to explore into the secrets of the past and the universe. Visit: www.mayacodex.wordpress.com
Dresden Codex, Latin Codex Dresdensis, one of the few collections of pre-Columbian Mayan hieroglyphic texts known to have survived the book burnings by the Spanish clergy during the 16th century. The codex was rediscovered in the city of Dresden, Germany, and that is how the Maya book received its present name. It contains astronomical calculations (eclipse-prediction tables, the synodical period of Venus) of exceptional accuracy.The codex was acquired by the Saxon State Library, Dresden, Saxony, and was published by Edward King, Viscount Kingsborough, in Antiquities of Mexico (1830-48). The book received direct water damage that was significantly destructive from being kept in a flooded basement during the bombing of Dresden in World War II. The pages are made of Amate, 8 inches high, and can be folded accordion-style; when unfolded the codex is 12 feet long.
Madrid Codex, also called Codex Tro-Cortesianus, a richly illustrated glyphic text of the pre-Conquest Mayan period and one of few known survivors of the mass book burnings by the Spanish clergy during the 16th century. The variant name Tro-Cortesianus is a result of the early separation of the manuscript into two parts, the first part (pages 22-56 and 78-112) being known as Troano for its first owner, Juan Tro y Ortolano, and the second (pages 1-21 and 57-77) being known as Cortesianus.The codex is held by the Museo de América in Madrid and is considered to be the most important piece in its collection. However, the original is not on display due to its fragility; an accurate reproduction is displayed in its stead.
For hundreds of years, Maya artists and scholars used hieroglyphs to record their history and culture. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, archaeologists, photographers, and artists recorded the Maya carvings that remained, often by transporting box cameras and plaster casts through the jungle on muleback. The New Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs, Volume I: The Classic Period Inscriptions is a guide to all the known hieroglyphic symbols of the Classic Maya script. In the New Catalog Martha J. Macri and Matthew G. Looper have produced a valuable research tool based on the latest Mesoamerican scholarship. An essential resource for all students of Maya texts, the New Catalog is also accessible to nonspecialists with an interest in Mesoamerican cultures. Macri and Looper present the combined knowledge of the most reliable scholars in Maya epigraphy. They provide currently accepted syllabic and logographic values, a history of references to published discussions of each sign, and related lexical entries from dictionaries of Maya languages, all of which were compiled through the Maya Hieroglyphic Database Project. This first volume of the New Catalog focuses on texts from the Classic Period (approximately 150-900 C.E.), which have been found on carved stone monuments, stucco wall panels, wooden lintels, carved and painted pottery, murals, and small objects of jadeite, shell, bone, and wood. The forthcoming second volume will describe the hieroglyphs of the three surviving Maya codices that date from later periods.
DECEMBER 2012 – TIME IS RUNNING OUT . . . Deep in the Guatemalan jungle lies the Maya Codex, an ancient document containing a terrible warning for civilisation. Archaeologist Dr Aleta Weizman and CIA agent Curtis O'Connor are desperately searching for the codex, but powerful forces in Washington and Rome will do anything to stop them. Both Weizman and O'Connor know that the earth will align with a massive black hole at the centre of the galaxy on the winter solstice, December 2012 – just as the Mayans predicted. Might a catastrophic pole shift be on the way? From the corridors of power in Nazi Germany to modern-day Washington, from the secret archives of the Vatican to the Temple of the Lost World pyramid in the jungles of Central America, The Maya Codex takes us on a heart-stopping journey to find the codex before it's too late. 'Adrian d'Hage mixes doomsday superstition with Da Vinci Code-like investigation in this page-turner thriller.' Courier Mail
This book of poems and stark, vivid illustrations is rooted in the female soul of indigenous Mexico. The Tzotzil women of the Chiapas Highlands are the poets and the artists. Ambar Past, who collected the poems and drawings, includes a moving essay about their poetics, beliefs, and history. In the 1970s, living among the Maya, Past watched the people endure as an epidemic swept through a village. No help came. Many children died. One mother offered her dead child a last sip of Coca-Cola and uttered a prayer: Take this sweet dew from the earth, take this honey. It will help you on your way. It will give you strength on your path. Incantations like this—poems about birth, love, hate, sex, despair, and death—coupled with primitive illustrations, provide a compelling insight into the psychology of these Mayan women poets. The Cinco Puntos edition of Incantations is a facsimile of the original handmade edition produced by the Taller Leñateros. It was reviewed in The New York Times. At the age of twenty-three, Ambar Past left the United States for Mexico. She lived among the Mayan people, teaching the techniques of native dyes and learning to speak Tzotzil. She is the creator of the graphic arts collective Taller Leñateros in Chiapas and was a founding member of Sna Jolobil, a weaving cooperative for Mayan artisans.
