INTRODUCTION. XXxi 



This Coclex corresponds in size, appearance, and manner of folding to 

 the descriptions of the Maya books which I have presented above from 

 Spanisli sources. It has thirty-nine leaves, thirty-five of which are colored 

 and inscribed on both sides, and four on one side only, so that there are 

 only seventy-four pages of matter. The total length of the sheet is 3.5 

 meters, and the height of each page is 0.2;'5 meter, the width 0.085 meter. 



The first publication of any portion of this Codex was by Alexander 

 von Humboldt, who had five pages of it copied for his work, Vucs cles Cor- 

 dilleres et Monumcns cles Peuples Indigenes de VAiuerique, issued at Paris in 

 1813 (not 1810, as the title-page has it). It was next very carefully copied 

 in full by the Italian artist, Agostino Aglio, for the third volume of Lord 

 Kingsborough's great work on Mexican Antiquities, the first volume of which 

 appeared in 1831. 



From Kingsborough's work a few pages of the Codex have been from 

 time to time republished in other books, which call for no special mention. 



Two pages were copied from the original in 1855, and appeared in 

 Wuttke's GeschicJite der Schrift, Leipzig, 1872. 



Finall}^, in 1880, the whole was very admirably chromo-photographed 

 by A. Naumann's establishment at Leipzig to the numl)er of fifty copies, 

 forty of which were placed on sale. It is the first work which was ever 

 published in chromo-photography, and has, therefore, a high scientific as 

 well as antiquarian interest. 



The editor was Dr. E. Forstemann, aulic counselor and librarian-in- 

 chief of the Royal Librar3\ He wrote an introduction (17 pp. 4to) givino- 

 a history of the manuscript, and bibliographical and other notes upon it of 

 much value. One opinion he defends must not be passed b}- in silence. It 

 is that the Dresden Codex is not one but parts of two original manuscripts 

 written by different hands. 



It appears that it has always been in two unequal fragments, which all 

 previous writers have attributed to an accidental injury to the original. Dr. 

 Forstemann gives a number of reasons for believing that this is not the cor- 

 rect explanation, but that we have here portions of two different books, 

 having general similarity but also many points of diversity. 



This separation led to an erroneous (or perhaps erroneous) sequence of 



