Dresden Codex

The Dresden Codex is a Maya book originating from the region of Chichén Itzá in Mexico. It was believed to be the oldest surviving book written in the Americas, dating to the 11th or 12th century, however in 2018 it was proven that the Maya Codex of Mexico, previously known as the Grolier Codex, is in fact older by about a century. The codex was rediscovered in the city of Dresden, Germany, hence the book's present name. It is located in the museum of the Saxon State Library. The codex contains information relating to astronomical and astrological tables, religious references, seasons of the earth, and illness and medicine. It also includes information about conjunctions of planets and moons. The book suffered serious water damage during World War II. The pages are made of amate, 20 centimetres (7.9 in) high, and can be folded accordion-style; when unfolded the codex is 3.7 metres (12 ft) long. It is written in Mayan hieroglyphs and refers to an original text of some three or four hundred years earlier, describing local history and astronomical tables. Like all other pre-Hispanic books from Mesoamerica, the Dresden Codex takes the form of a screenfold. The pages consist of a paper made from the pounded inner bark of a wild species of fig, Ficus cotinifolia, (hu'un in Maya—a word that became semantically equivalent to "book").