262 AIDS TO THE STUDY OF THE MAYA CODICES. 



"Gotze coutiuues speaking of tliis book from page 1 to 5. adding, 

 however, little of moment, but expatiating on Mexican painting and 

 hieroglyphic writing in general. On page 4 he says : 



" ' Our royal library has this su]ifiiniit y over all others, that it pos- 

 sesses this rare treasure. It was uliiaimd a few years ago at Vienna 

 from a private person, for notliiny. as l)eing an unknown thing. 

 It is doubtless from the personal effects of a Spaniard, who had either 

 been in Mexico himself or whose ancestors had been there." 



" On page 5 Gotze says : 



'"In the Vatican library there are some leaves of similar Mexican 

 writing, as stated by Mi-. Joseph Simonius Asseman, who 'saw our 

 copy four years ago at Rome.' 



" Gotze therefore received the manuscript as a present on his jour- 

 ney to Italy at Vienna and took it with him to Rome. Unfortunately 

 we know nothing concerning its former possessor. A more accurate 

 report of the journey does not seem to exist; at least the i^rincipal 

 state archives at Dresden contain nothing concerning it, nor does the 

 General Directory of the Royal Collections. As appears from the 

 above note, Gotze did not know that the Vatican Codex was of an en- 

 tirely different nature from the Dresden Codex. 



" In spite of the high value which Gotze set upon the manuscript, 

 it reiiiaiiiiMl unnoticiMl and imiiiciit i(JiuMl far iiitdour century. Even 

 Joliaiiii Cliiisl.-i.], A.l.'lun-. wli..as h..a.l lihniiian had it in ] lis cus- 

 tody and win. (IkmI in l.s(i(i. doi^s nut nn-ntion it in his Mitliridates, of 

 which that part which treats of American languages (III, 3) was piib- 

 lished only in 1816, after Adelung's death, by J. S. Vater. This would 

 have been a fitting occasion to mention the Dresden Codex, because 

 in this volume (pp. 13 et seq. ) the Maya language is largely treated of, 

 and further on the other languages of Anahuac. Of course it was not 

 possible at that time to know that our manuscript belongs to the former. 



''After Gotze, the first to mention oiir codex is C. A. Bottiger, in his 

 Ideas on Archaeology (Dresden, 1811, pp. 30, 21), without, however, 

 saying anything that we did not already know from Gotze. Still 

 Bottiger rendered great and twofold service: first, as we shall see 

 presently, because through him Alexander von Humboldt obtained 

 some notice of the manuscript, and, second, because Bottiger's note, as 

 he himself explains in the Dresden Anzeiger, No. 133, p. 5, 1833, in- 

 duced Lord Kingsborough to have the manuscript copied in Dresden. 



" We now come to A. von Humboldt. His Views of the Cordilleras 

 and the Monuini'nts of Uw Iinli.nvnous P(.<,pl,.s of America bears on 

 thctitli' pa^v Ihc yi.'ai' Islii. \vlii<-li ccrtainlN- means only the year in 

 whicli the i)iantingwas hegun. t lie invfaee heing dated 1SI3. To this 

 work, which gave a mighty impulse to the study of Central American 

 languages and literatures, belongs the Atlas piti;oresque, and in this 

 are found, on page 45. the rejiroductions of five pages of our manu- 

 script. They are Nos. 47, 48, 50, 51. and 53 of Lord Kingsborough. 

 In the volume of text belonging to this atlas Humboldt discusses our 



