In the previous blog entry we told a story about a literary treasure of Americas - the Popol Vuh. Even today this famous manuscript presents a significant part in the belief system of many Quiche and Mayan people of Central America. They continue to blend Christian and indigenous beliefs. This sacred Book of Natives Americans spread far beyond our continent: it has been translated and published in English, Hungarian, Estonian Spanish and other languages.
Up to our days archeologists continue to discover classic Maya pottery shows some of the main characters of the Popol Vuh as the Hero Twins and the Howler Monkey Gods. There are different versions of the story that continue to influence modern Maya as folk legends. Anthropologists recorded many of them and noted that some stories preserve portions of the ancient tales even in greater detail than the book itself.
The Newberry Library in Chicago contains the single most important piece of Mesoamerican literature called Popol Vuh. The significance of the Popol Vuh is immense since it is one of a small number of early Mesoamerican mythological texts. It is a book created in the Classical Quiché language containing mythological narratives and a genealogy of the rulers of the old the Quiché kingdom of highland Guatemala. The original manuscript of the Popol Vuh written about 1550 has been lost to us. Luckily, a Spanish monk kept a handwritten copy in the early 18th century which survived and reached us.
The Popol Vuh is based on an original Maya codex written in the Mayan hieroglyphic script. It contains a creation myth followed by mythological stories of two Hero Twins: Hunahpu and Xbalanque. The second part of the book deals with details of the foundation and history of the Quiché kingdom, tying in the royal family with the legendary gods in order to assert rule by divine right.
The invasion of conquistadors to America resulted in almost total destroyal of documents and manuscripts of Mesoamerican rituals and life. One of a little few that survived the ordeal is located in the Apostolic Library of Vatican. Specialists call this famous manuscript Codex Borgia - it consists of 39 sheets of made of the animal skin. All sheets except one are painted on both sides. Up to this day Codex Borgia remains an enigma: nobody knows its origin, although many believe that it came from someplace on the territory of the modern Mexican state Puebla.
The dsicovery of the manuscript is interesting story by itself. It seems that the document was brought from America to Italy during early Spanish colonial period. The last owner of the manuscript was Italian cardinal Stefano Borgia (which explains the name of the codex). Borgia was a well-known theologian, antiquarian, and historian of the 18th century. When he died in 1804 he left the treasure of invaluable artifacts that he collected throughout his life. Alexander von Humboldt, extraordinary German naturalist and explorer, due to his greatness was allowed by Vatican to organize the artifacts in 1805. This is where Alexander discovered the enigmatic document and realized its importance, as he traveled so many times to America with research expeditions.
Even now specialists can not claim that they decoded every piece of the codex correctly because nobody can understand the ways of ancient Aztec priests. Thus, the largest part of the great manuscript contains the whole story with rituals, ball games and historical events that are not decoded. And up to this day the longest sequence in the document remains a mystery.
