The Paris Codex is one of four surviving Mayan screenfold books that predate the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica. Recent advances in Mayan epigraphy have generated a good deal of literature detailing the life of the pre-Hispanic Maya. Bruce Love has built on much of this recent scholarship to produce an excellent work emphasizing the use of the Paris Codex in the hands of a trained Maya priest. The author states in the preface that the book is not intended to be an offering of numerous “new decipherments” but rather “an understanding of the integrative nature of Maya religion and the intricate interweaving of spirit forces as seen by the Maya priests” (p. xi).
This volume is broken down into three sections: background text, a fine black- and-white reproduction of the codex, and a discussion of each page of the codex (22 pages in all, although two additional pages are presumed missing). Love also enhances his analysis through extensive comparisons with other codexes; with buildings containing glyphs, stelae, and murals; and with scholarship both ethnographic and academic. Important in the background section is the supposition that the codex was created in Mayapan, a center of priestly study and book production (located in the present-day state of Yucatán), around 1450 a.d. This would indicate that the Paris Codex was in use at the time of the Spanish colonization of the peninsula.
No detailed rendering of the codex would be complete without a photographic account of the original. This one allows widespread access in black and white; unfortunately, the reader is not treated to color photographs or new shots of the original, which is housed in the Bibliothèque Nacionale in Paris. A color facsimile would have enabled the reader better to follow the author's analysis, which at times relies heavily on the context of color.
The most valuable section of Love's work is his interpretation of the codex in the context of use by a Maya priest. Love illuminates how the priest might have used specific pages to recount history, prophecy, omens, ritual offerings (especially to God C), almanacs (in relation to rain), year bearers (depicting the 52-year cycle with primary focus on maize), weather, the spirit world, and constellations. The “signs of the night” identified in the codex, for example, “present a visual tableau of Maya constellations that were yet another class of spirit beings —forces in the sky that influenced humans on the ground” (p. 102). Quite naturally, the omnipotent Maya priest would interpret these forces.
This work is well written, richly illustrated, and superbly researched. It should find a large audience, especially among those interested in the Maya and other pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican civilizations, specialists and nonspecialists alike.
