The Grolier Codex, now officially named Códice Maya de México (CMM), consists of 10 surviving folios of what was once a 20-folio Venus calendar; it was based on the 584 days the planet followed from its heliacal appearance as Morning Star, its disappearance during Superior Conjunction, appearance as Evening Star, and long disappearance during Inferior Conjunction. Five of these cycles are given on the CMM, and each phase within a cycle has a death-dealing supernatural, rather than just the Morning Star as in the Dresden, Borgia, and Vaticanus B codices. It was painted in a style that is clearly intermediate between Maya and Postclassic Mixteca-Puebla traditions. The verso side of the codex was left blank. It was first exhibited in 1971 at the Grolier Club in New York City; I described it in detail in the 1973 catalogue of that exhibit. A single radiocarbon date on accompanying bark paper placed it in the middle of the Postclassic.
The attack on the CMM's authenticity began in 1973 with a scathing review by Eric Thompson of the Grolier catalog, in which he claimed that the inept forger had used an ancient stock of bark paper discovered in a cave in Puebla and that he (the faker) had misunderstood how to express the number of days between each part of the Venus count, combining Maya “Ring Numbers” with non-Maya dots. Despite the fact that many Maya epigraphers, astro-archaeologists (particularly John Carlson), and art historians accepted the manuscript's authenticity, there followed more than four decades of further attacks. Among the skeptics were Susan Milbrath (2002), Claude Baudez (2002), Bruce Love (2017, 2018), and Laura Sotelo (2018). Some of the additional claims the doubters put forward were that there were no identifiable Maya gods to be seen, the water stains on the codex had been made with modern watercolor, dirt had been rubbed on the surface of the pages to make them look old, the verso sides of codex folios were left blank, the artist was a bumbler who couldn't follow his own undersketches, and cuts by steel scissors could be identified.
In 2007, a team headed by José Luis Ruvalcaba of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) was tasked to undertake a nondestructive analysis of the codex. Although their findings were inconclusive, they failed to detect any use of modern materials. What they did detect was gesso (instead of calcium carbonate) for the white background, carbon black and red ocher (probably specular hematite) for the drawings, and palygorskite clay—a component of Maya blue—on Folio 10.
Finally, in 2015 a team that included Mary Miller, Stephen Houston, Karl Taube, and me published a detailed study of what was then known about the codex, its materials, its Early Postclassic style, and the iconography of the menacing supernaturals on each page— such as the split-mountain, maize-bearing deity hurling rocks to be seen on Grolier 9, a being who would have been unknown to any forger of the 1960s decade.
Which brings me to the volume reviewed here, which is certainly the finest technical study ever made of the materials of a Mesoamerican codex and possibly on any ancient manuscript in the world. As explained by Sofia Martínez del Campo Lanz, the project began in November 2016, with a meeting between José Enrique Ortiz Lanz, coordinator of all Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) museums and exhibits; Baltazar Brito Guadarrama, director of the National Library of Anthropology and History; and Antonio Saborit, director of the Museo Nacional de Antropología, to solve the question once and for all: Was the codex genuine or not?
Within a year, a team had been put together that involved specialists from INAH, UNAM, and the University of Colorado Boulder (in particular, Gerardo Gutiérrez). The 16 contributions in the volume begin with an accurate history of the CMM by Brito Guadarrama, extending from its mysterious surfacing in the home of a Mexican collector until today, and previews by Martinez del Campo and Carolusa González Tirado of what the joint team concluded: this is definitely the fourth known Maya codex, was written in the Early Postclassic, and is now recognized as the oldest of the Maya codices and as a Mexican national treasure.
The bark paper over which the gesso surface was applied is three ply; like the Dresden Codex, the central component consists of stiff, vertical fibers, and in the two outer ones the fibers are horizontal and much finer. Two of the contributions identify the plant source as the cambium of Ficus sp., the well-known papel de amate of contemporary indigenous artists in Puebla and Guerrero. However, in the CMM and in the Dresden, the usual felting carried out today with bark beaters was completely avoided. There must have been another way that the different layers adhered to each other.
Gerardo Gutiérrez, Ricardo Sánchez, and others take the analysis of materials used by the codex artist into new territories through the techniques of raman spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence, multispectral imagery, and reflectance spectrometry. In addition to specular hematite and lampblack, the use of Maya blue on the body of water shown on Folio 10 is definitely confirmed. For the light-brown undersketch, the pigment included cochineal, unknown in the other three Maya codices.
The extreme deterioration of the CMM, with the first half of its original folios gone, is shown in several of these chapters to have resulted from natural and biological factors. The CMM was originally folded and laid away, almost certainly in a dry cave; however, it was subject to at least two episodes of high humidity, which caused the loss and staining of the folios. Its folded state at that time is clear on Folio 9, in which several of the missing day glyphs of Folio 10 appear as “ghosts” on the god's torso and knee.
Simultaneously, the CMM was attacked by insects and perhaps arthropods, as shown in a fascinating study and experimentation by UNAM entomologists. There are even body parts and excreta left by these creatures. And it was bugs chewing away that made those alleged “scissor marks.” Macrophotography by Gutiérrez discloses that the final episode of destruction was the result of looters pulling apart the remaining folios by force.
As reported by several authors in this volume, there are now available AMS radiocarbon determinations based on extremely small amate fiber samples from the codex itself, and not just on the loose accompanying paper. The UNAM radiometric team concludes that the CMM's date of creation lies between AD 1025 and 1357, with at least 95% probability.
In a magisterial summary of all known radiocarbon evidence, including a Beta Analytic dating of Folio 3 (1060 ± 30 BP), Gutiérrez and Brito conclude that the CMM is slightly earlier than those dates. They claim that it is contemporary with Toltec Tula (the Tollan Phase), and with “New Chichen Itza” (the Great Ball Court, the Castillo, and the Temple of the Warriors). Written in the Early Postclassic between AD 1000 and 1200, the CMM is two to five centuries earlier than all other Mesoamerican codices. This conclusion is reinforced by Erik Velásquez's study of astronomical knowledge after the downfall of the Classic Maya.
Finally, an important contribution to the volume by art historian Saeko Yanagisawa of the Museo Amparo shows that the stylistic closeness of the CMM to Mixteca-Puebla codices is evident in figures holding objects, but with two left hands; the depiction of long bones on the legs of dead people or gods; and the depiction of standing feet in profile. She has in fact discovered 24 cases of total similarity between the two traditions. Either the CMM artist already knew the Mixteca-Puebla style, or the Mixteca-Puebla artists knew the world of the CMM. Either way, the origin of the Mixteca-Puebla style must lie in the Early Postclassic.
In my estimation, this beautifully illustrated volume is a milestone in the study and appreciation of the Mesoamerican past. And it stands as a total vindication of the ancient aj tz'ib who created and painted the CMM.
