Grolier Codex

The Grolier Codex (sometimes referred to as the Sáenz Codex) is a Maya book of a pre-Columbian type but of disputed authenticity. It first appeared in a private collection in the 20th century and was displayed at the Grolier Club in New York, hence its name. The codex consists of a fragment of a Maya book, containing almanacs of Venus represented in a simplistic fashion. The Grolier Codex would be only the fourth surviving pre-Columbian Maya book if genuine. The codex is said to have been recovered from a cave in the Mexican state of Chiapas in the 1960s, together with a mosaic mask and some blank pages of pre-Columbian fig-bark paper. It was displayed at the Grolier Club from April 20 to June 5, 1971, and is now held in Mexico City. In 1973, Michael D. Coe published the first half-size recto-side facsimile of the codex in The Maya Scribe and His World, produced by the Grolier Club. The codex contains a Venus almanac that, in structure, is closely related to the Venus almanac contained in the Dresden Codex.

The codex, although displaying Mixtec stylistic features, is judged to be Maya (if genuine) based upon the use of bark paper instead of the deerhide preferred for Mixtec codices and because of the presence of Maya day signs and numbering. The Mixtec interpretation of the iconography may simply be due to incomplete knowledge of highland Maya iconography during the Postclassic period.

The codex is poorly preserved; the surviving page fragments display a number of figures in central Mexican style, combined with Maya numbering and day glyphs. The document is currently held by the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico city and is not on public display. The physics institute of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México subjected the codex to non-destructive testing in an effort to determine its authenticity. The results were published in 2007 and were mixed; the document apparently contains genuine pre-Columbian materials but certain aspects, such as seemingly artificially induced wear and tear, are suspect. The researchers concluded that they were unable to prove or disprove the pre-Columbian nature of the codex.

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