Grolier Codex

The Grolier Codex was long disputed because of its unusual provenance—it reportedly surfaced in a cave in Mexico in the 1960s before being displayed at the Grolier Club in New York in 1971. Its relatively pristine condition and the circumstances of its discovery led some scholars to question whether it was a genuine pre-Columbian artifact or a modern forgery.

Its surviving pages pair painted figures, likely deities or ritual participants, with calendrical signs connected to the cycles of the planet Venus. This focus on Venus astronomy parallels content found in the three other accepted Maya codices, particularly the Dresden Codex.

After decades of debate, a thorough multidisciplinary study published around 2016 concluded the codex is authentic, and it is now officially known as the Maya Codex of Mexico. The study found that the materials, pigments, and iconographic conventions are consistent with genuine pre-Columbian Maya manuscripts.

Only eleven fragmentary pages of the original screenfold manuscript survive, making it the most incomplete of the four known pre-Columbian Maya codices. By comparison, the Dresden Codex, the longest surviving Maya manuscript, has roughly 78 pages.