". . . a work of painstaking scholarship in an extraordinarily difficult field."

—Munro S. Edmonson, professor of anthropology, Tulane University

The Maya civilization left many records carved in the stones of its cities, but only four handpainted books, or codices, are known to have survived from the pre-Columbian era. The Paris Codex is one of these (the others are the Dresden, Madrid, and Grolier codices), and this groundbreaking study is the first comprehensive treatment of this codex since 1910.

The Paris Codex consists of twenty-two screen-folded pages of hieroglyphs, painted figures, and calendrical calculations, which are reproduced in this volume. One section covers the calendrical cycles of katuns, tuns, and uinals, which Maya priests used to read history and predict the future. Other sections cover weather almanacs; the influence of God C, also known as k’u; the four yearbearers with their thirteen numbers; the Maya spirit entities, including sky gods and earth or death gods; and the Maya constellations.

Bruce Love takes an ethnographic approach to the codex, analyzing its use by Maya priests as a handbook of divination, prophecy, and history. He explores the unique features that distinguish this from the other three codices—the inclusion of historical material in the katun pages and the description of the Maya constellations or "signs of the night," which, he argues, do not necessarily correspond to the constellations of the modern zodiac. Whenever possible, he links the belief system represented in the codex with Colonial Period and modern-day Maya beliefs to show their continuity through time.