IPS-English GUATEMALA: Mayan Manuscript Returned (In Replica)
 
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:03:12 -0700

 
Inés Benítez

GUATEMALA CITY, Oct 26   (IPS)  - A Mayan manuscript known as the
Dresden Codex was acquired by the Royal Library of the court of Saxony
in 1739. As of this week, an exact replica of the precious manuscript
is on display in Guatemala, donated by the Saxon State Library in
Dresden, Germany, which holds the original.

One of only three pre-Columbian Mayan manuscripts in existence, the
Dresden Codex was written and illustrated between 1200 and 1250 by
eight scribes. It contains astronomical tables, forecasts of weather
and harvests, and writings about illness, medicine, constellations
and planets.   

It was probably sent to Europe by Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés
as a tribute to King Charles I of Spain, who was also the Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V, and it somehow found its way to the Dresden library,
via Vienna.

”We are very grateful. Access to the codex will stimulate scientific
work and progress,” Guatemalan Deputy Foreign Minister Luis Fernando
Andrade told IPS. Andrade brought the copy back to the country on
Sept. 18, after receiving it from Thomas Bürger, the head of the Saxon
State Library.

Andrade was able to view the original codex in Dresden, and he emphasises
the exactness of the replica, which was made in 1970 in the Austrian
city of Graz. It is 3.56 metres long and consists of 39 fan-folded
leaves, 35 of which are written on both sides, making 74 pages.  
 

Hieroglyphs in the manuscripts are painted in black, red and blue
on paper made from the bark of the wild fig tree, which is abundant
in warm regions of Mesoamerica (southern Mexico and Central America).

”We receive this replica with emotion, joy and commitment, so that
future generations may study it and learn what our roots are,” said
Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein, at the handover ceremony
on Oct. 22, which was attended by Prince Alexander of Saxony, Bürger,
and local and foreign archaeologists.

Stein described the Dresden Codex, regarded as the most elaborate
and complete of those in existence, as ”an extremely rare example
of what was once a rich and varied collection of Mayan cultural treasures.”

The other two pre-Columbian Mayan codices which escaped destruction
at the hands of the colonisers are called the Paris and Madrid codices,
because they are found in the National Library of France and the Museum
of the Americas in Madrid, respectively.

The lengthy bark-paper manuscripts, which fold up like an accordion,
are an important source for scholars who study the Maya. There were
thousands like them, according to the accounts of Spanish missionaries
and friars, who burned them because they believed they were ”demonic.”

Prince Alexander stressed the importance of giving Guatemala the
replica document, and called to mind that it was by order of one of
his ancestors that the original had been bought in Vienna, in 1739,
for the Royal Library of Saxony.

Prince Alexander, who spent several years in Mexico, said he hoped
that with this codex Guatemalans might again find the historic path
of the Maya people. He also said he felt that Latin America has much
to give the world.

When Dresden was heavily bombed in World War II, the library was
severely damaged. Twelve pages of the codex were affected and the
hieroglyphs in the upper lefthand corners of the pages were completely
erased.

The three known authentic Mayan codices, sacred books with jaguar
skin covers, are from the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, Nikolai Grube,
the head of the University of Bonn's Institute of American Anthropology,
said in a lecture.

The drawings in the Dresden Codex depict both Mayan and Aztec gods,
demonstrating the spiritual and commercial contacts between the two
empires.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú, a Maya Indian from Guatemala,
said at the official handover ceremony that ”this sacred codex will
bring energy to the Maya who are alive today in this plural, multicultural
and multiethnic Mesoamerica.”

”Our grandfathers and grandmothers are here with us now,” she said,
adding that balancing the material and the spiritual is a need within
indigenous communities and all over the world.

Mayan writing is still being deciphered, although linguists have
worked out the phonetic signs, as well as many of the symbols or logograms.

The Dresden Codex contains a ceremonial almanac for the different
gods, tables of solar and lunar eclipses, and tables for calculating
the movements of Venus and Mars, as well as new year ceremonies and
a prophecy for a ”k'atun” (a period of 20 years in the Mayan calendar).

According to Grube, the most beautiful pages in the Dresden Codex,
and the only ones in full colour, are the six devoted to the table
of Venus, the celestial body of greatest interest to the Maya, which
they associated with war and bad omens.

”The painting is extremely fine and detailed. The scribe worked with
a single-haired brush to draw exquisitely fine lines,” he said.

In the Dresden Codex, the Maya had a calendar showing the complete
cycle of Venus. They counted five Venusian periods of 584 days each
-- a total of 2,920 days or about eight solar years, to complete one
great cycle.  

”The Maya were very familiar with the Venus cycle, and they were
excellent astronomers,” said Grube. Their astronomical tables were
used by Maya priests to make prophecies and to study the influence
of the heavenly bodies on human affairs.

The Venus table is decorated with a score of gods and goddesses,
including the god of Death, the Maize god and the Moon goddess. Their
depictions can be recognised in paintings of the same period on ceramics,
or stone engravings, and in a series of Mexican deities. Each one
is associated with a certain position of Venus.

The deputy foreign minister said he would like to see a textbook
written, geared towards Guatemalan students and those interested in
history, which would compile interpretations of the Dresden Codex,
the replica of which is now on exhibition at the Guatemalan Museum
of Archaeology.

A facsimile of the codex was first published by Edward King, Viscount
Kingsborough, in ”Antiquities of Mexico” (London, 1830). But it was
Constantine Rafinesque of Turkey who identified it as a Maya codex
and contributed to the study and deciphering of its hieroglyphs.

Ernst Förstermann, librarian of the Royal Library in Dresden, reproduced
the entire codex, with commentary, in 1880 and 1892. However, the
most important publication was a book containing all three Maya codices,
redrawn by hand by the brothers Antonio and Carlos Villacorta (Guatemala
City, 1930-1933).

On Oct. 24, the delegation from Dresden headed by Prince Alexander
visited Tikal, the greatest of the ancient Maya cities of the classical
period, in Petén in northern Guatemala.    


*****
+ GUATEMALA: Satellites Uncover Mayan Secrets - 2006 (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32361)
+ CULTURE-LATIN AMERICA: Indigenous Languages in Final Throes - 2006
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32884)
+ The Dresden Codex (http://www.tu-dresden.de/slub/proj/maya/mayaeng.html)


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