The Dresden Codex is one of only four existing examples of Mayan writing. Other examples of the civilization’s writing were all destroyed by the Spanish during their conquest of the New World.
Bishop Diego de Landa, in an effort to convert the Mayan people to Christianity, publicly burned most of their books and artifacts in 1562. This was his attempt at eliminating idol worship. In order to view the books he had to gain their trust before destroying their culture.
The Dresden Codex has accurate tables outlining the movement of Venus through the night sky as well as predictions for lunar eclipses. Fascinating, considering this was before they had access to telescopes.
Mayan writing took centuries to decode because it’s a combination of phonetic and symbolic writing. Approx. four hundred years after the burning of the majority of their books, a Russian researcher was able to read the Dresden Codex using notes from de Landa (at least he left a record of how to read a language he effectively destroyed).
In addition to describing Venus and the moon, the Dresden Codex also describes the Mayan 260-day calendar.
The ideas for this story have resonated the deepest with me. I envision a dual narrative taking place in two times, one in 1562 and culminating with the book burning and another narrative taking place in modern times, in which a descendant of de Landa suffers for, then somehow makes up for, the damage his ancestor caused.
The modern-day ancestory could could suffer through tortured dreams, through getting caught in a fire as a child, then at the end his final act could be to run into a fire to save the modern-day ancestor of the scribe de Landa tricked all those years ago. Or to save an authors books. Or it could come out that a missing example of Mayan writing, a fifth Codex, exists and outlines all of his story. That when he finally decodes this fifth example, through a long process, he finds out he’s de Landa’s descendant and must atone for his sins by jumping into a fire which is burning recycled books, long out of print.
This post is literally a stream of consciousness dump, so I apologize. Looks like there’s a research trip to the Yucatan Peninsula in my future.
