430 



ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 193 3 



manuscripts.^ In the British Museum among other Mexican docu- 

 ments is the Zouche codex, the finest of all New World books ex- 

 cepting only the wonderful Dresden codex. Pot of Basil for the Maya 

 civilization. Then there is the Fejervary-Mayer codex kept in the 

 Free Public Museums of Liverpool, which, like the Laud, is thaum- 

 aturgic and need not be mentioned further. 



For the ancient annals and biographies we must look to the 

 Bodley, Selden, and Zouche codices of England and the Vienna 

 codex of Austria (especially the reverse side, pages I to XIII). 

 Some slight additional information can be gathered in two frag- 

 ments of another codex, one part in Mexico being known as the 



VIENNA CODEX REVERSE 



47 46 



HORIZONTAL MEANDER 

 45 44 



<1> 



a 



r^ 



Vj \Kj \\\b 





BODLEY CODEX 



IRREGULAR GUIDE LINES 



SELDEN CODEX 

 VERTICAL MEANDER 



FiGUEB 1. — Guide lines which control the stream of text. 



Colombino, and another part in Austria being called the Becker. 

 Perhaps some worthwhile data will also be found in a number of 

 post-Spanish records kept on sheets of cotton which for the present 

 we neglect. 



All the books mentioned above are painted in colors on one or 

 both sides of long strips of prepared deerskin, folded screenwise. 

 The text, which consists of pictures and hieroglyphs, meanders 

 between red guide lines, sometimes with complete regularity of pat- 

 tern as in the historical section of the Vienna manuscript. At other 

 times, as in the Bodley manuscript, the guide lines are arranged to 



^ Also this library possesses the Seldon roll and the famous compendium of Aztec history 

 and social usages made by order of Mendoza, the First Viceroy of New Spain. 



