Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices | Page 3

century. Even Johann Christoph Adelung, who as head librarian had it in his custody and who died in 1806, does not mention it in his Mithridates, of which that part which treats of American languages (III, 3) was published 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 G?tze, the first to mention our codex is C. A. B?ttiger, in his Ideas on Arch?ology (Dresden, 1811, pp. 20, 21), without, however, saying anything that we did not already know from G?tze. Still B?ttiger 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 B?ttiger's note, as he himself explains in the Dresden Anzeiger, No. 133, p. 5, 1832, induced Lord Kingsborough to have the manuscript copied in Dresden.
"We now come to A. von Humboldt. His Views of the Cordilleras and the Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of America bears on the title page the year 1810, which certainly means only the year in which the printing was begun, the preface being dated 1813. To this work, which gave a mighty impulse to the study of Central American languages and literatures, belongs the Atlas pittoresque, and in this are found, on page 45, the reproductions of five pages of our manuscript. They are Nos. 47, 48, 50, 51, and 52 of Lord Kingsborough. In the volume of text belonging to this atlas Humboldt discusses our manuscript on pp. 266, 267. When he began his work he knew nothing as yet of the existence of the manuscript. It was brought to his knowledge by B?ttiger, whose above named work he cites. Here we learn for the first time that the material of the manuscript consists of the plant metl (Agave Mexicana,) like other manuscripts that Humboldt had brought from New Spain. Furthermore, he correctly states the length of leaf as 0.295 and the breadth 0.085 meter. On the other hand, he commits two mistakes in saying that there are 40 leaves and that the whole folded table forming the codex has a length of almost 6 meters, for there are only 39 leaves and the length in question is only 3.5 meters, as calculation will approximately show, because the leaves are written on both sides. Humboldt's other remarks do not immediately concern our problem.
"In 1822 Fr. Ad. Ebert, then secretary and later head librarian, published his History and Description of the Royal Public Library at Dresden. Here we find, as well in the history (p. 66) as in the description (p. 161), some data concerning this 'treasure of highest value,' which indeed contain nothing new, but which certainly contributed to spread the knowledge of the subject among wider circles. We may remark right here that H. L. Fleischer, in his Catalogue of Oriental Manuscript Codices in the Royal Library of Dresden, p. 75, Leipzig, 1831, 4^o, makes but brief mention of our codex, as 'a Mexican book of wood, illustrated with pictures, which awaits its OEdipus;' whereupon he cites the writing of B?ttiger. The signature of the manuscript here noted, E 451, is the one still in use.
"Between the above mentioned notices by Ebert and Fleischer falls the first and so far the only complete reproduction of the manuscript. Probably in 1826, there appeared at Dresden the Italian Augustino Aglio, a master of the art of making fac similes by means of tracing through transparent substances. He visited the European libraries, very probably even at that time under orders from Lord Kingsborough, to copy scattered manuscripts and pictures from Mexico or seemingly from Mexico.
"Now there arises the question, all important for interpretation, In which shape did the manuscript lie before Aglio? Was it a strip only 3.5 meters in length or did it consist of several pieces?
"To render clear the answer which we proceed to give, it is first necessary to remark that of the 39 leaves of the codex 35 are written on both sides and 4 on one side only, so that we can speak only of 74 pages of manuscript, not of 78. These 74 pages we shall in the following always designate by the numbers which they bear in Lord Kingsborough, and it is advisable to abide by these numbers, for the sake of avoiding all error, until the manuscript can be read with perfect certainty; the 4 empty pages I shall designate with 0 when there is need of mentioning them expressly.
"Furthermore it is necessary to state