Check out these full-color, large-size reproductions of pages from the Dresden Codex, a Mayan magical script. Pages include invocations of gods and planetary energies. Fascinating stuff.
“The height of Maya civilization in what are now parts of Central America and Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula lasted for most of the first millennium CE, and elements of Maya culture survived until the arrival of Europeans in the early sixteenth century.
Among the greatest accomplishments of the Maya was the development of highly sophisticated mathematical and astronomical systems, both of which played an important role in their religious beliefs and practices.”
The Dresden Codex (named for the city where it is housed) is a fig bark paper manuscript in concertina style, produced around the beginning of the 13th century (a contentious point). The seventy four pages are sewn together producing an eleven foot document which was originally folded up between protective wooden covers bearing engraved jaguars. As the most complete of the few remaining Maya manuscripts, it is a comprehensive source for Maya calendar and astronomy systems and an aid to glyph interpretation in the wider iconography of the Maya culture.
“The Dresden Codex was written by eight different scribes using both sides. They all had their own particular writing style, glyphs and subject matter. [..] Its images were painted with extraordinary clarity using very fine brushes. The basic colors used from vegetable dyes for the codex were red, black and the so-called Mayan blue.”