Key Info

- Manuscripts of the Mesoamerican indigenous pictoric tradition

Brief Bio

Spanish Conquest and destruction of Mesoamerican civilizations resulted in only about twenty known pre-Columbian codices surviving to modern times.

Codices were made from any of the following:

Tira: Painted or drawn on a long and more or less narrow strip composed of sheets of animal hide or paper.

Screenfold: Painted on a tira and folded like a screen in the fashion of an accordion.

Rol: A tira that has been rolled

Lienzo: A sheet of cloth, that illustrated a story in a gradn format

Mayan Codices

- Dresden Codex also known as the Codex Dresdensis (74 pages, 11.7 feet); Dating to the 11th or 12th century.

- Madrid Codex, also known as the Tro-Cortesianus Codex (112 pages, 22.4 feet) dating to the Postclassic period of Mesoamerican chronology (circa 900–1521 AD).

- Paris Codex, also known as the Peresianus Codex (22 pages, 4.8 feet]) tentatively dated to around 1450, in the Late Postclassic period (AD 1200–1525).

- Grolier Codex, also known as the Sáenz Codex lacks hieroglyphs (10 pages).

Aztec Codices

Codex Borbonicus, Codex Borgia, Codex Borgianus, Codex Cospi, Codex Fejervary Mayer, Codex Ixtlilxochitl, Codex Laud, Codex Magliabechiano, Codex Mendoza, Codex Quetzalecatzin, Codex Rios, Codex Vaticanus 3738, Codex Vaticanus 3773