Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices: Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884-85, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1888, pages 253-372 — John Shaqi
Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices: Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884-85, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1888, pages 253-372Thomas, Cyrus
History
Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices: Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884-85, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1888, pages 253-372
Thomas, Cyrus
Codex Dresdensis Maya; Maya language
"Thus the copy of Aglio has made it possible to venture a hypothesis
bordering on certainty concerning the original form of this monument.
Five years after Aglio had finished the copying there appeared, in 1831,
the first volumes of Lord Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities. The work in
the trade cost 175_l_.; the expense of publication had been over
30,000_l_. The eighth and ninth volumes followed only in 1848. The
ponderous work has undoubtedly great value from its many illustrations of
old monuments of Central American art and literature, which in great part
had never been published. As regards the Spanish and English text, it is
of much less value. We may pass in silence over the notes added by Lord
Kingsborough himself, in which he tries to give support to his favorite
hypothesis that the Jews were the first settlers of America. Whoever
wishes to obtain exact information concerning the character and contents
of the whole work and dreads the labor of lifting and opening the
volumes, may find a comprehensive review of it in the Foreign Quarterly
Review, No. 17, pp. 90-124, 8vo, London, January, 1832, where he will
also find a lucid exposition of the history of the literature of Mexican
antiquarian studies.
"In the middle of the third volume of the Mexican Antiquities (side
numbers are here absent) there is found the title 'Fac simile of an
original Mexican painting preserved in the Royal Library at Dresden, 74
pages.' These 74 pages are here arranged on 27 leaves in the following
manner:
Codex A. Codex B.
1, 2, 3, 46, 47, 48,
4, 5, 6, 49, 50, 51,
7, 8, 9, 52, 53, 54,
10, 11, 55, 56, 57,
12, 13, 14, 58, 59, 60,
15, 16, 17, 61, 62, 63,
18, 19, 64, 65, 66,
20, 67, 68, 69,
21, 22, 23, 70, 71, 72,
24, 25, 73, 74.
26, 27, 28,
29, 30, 31,
32, 33, 34,
35, 36, 37,
38, 39, 40,
41, 42, 43,
44, 45.
"On the whole, therefore, each leaf in Kingsborough comprises three pages
of our manuscript. Why the publisher joined only two pages in the case of
10 and 11, 18 and 19, 24 and 25, and left page 20 entirely separate, I
cannot say; but when he failed to add 46 to 44 and 45 it was due to the
fact that here there is indication of a different manuscript.
"On January 27, 1832, Lord Kingsborough wrote a letter from
Mitchellstown, near Cork, in Ireland, to Fr. Ad. Ebert, then head
librarian at Dresden, thanking him again for the permission to have the
manuscript copied and telling him that he had ordered his publisher in
London to send to the Royal Public Library at Dresden one of the ten
copies of the work in folio. The original of the letter is in Ebert's
manuscript correspondence in the Dresden library.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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