When Spanish priests arrived in Yucatan in the 16th century, they found hundreds of books and burned them. One of the types of chronicles of the ancient people was lost almost forever. What is left to us from the written heritage of the ancient Mayans? Fortunately, four Mayan manuscripts miraculously survived the fires of the Spanish Inquisition. On a long strip of brown paper, made from ficus bast and folded like a fan, mysterious signs and incomprehensible drawings were applied with a hair brush. The path and circumstances of the movement of these books from their native places to Europe are unknown. Only the location of their current location is known for certain.

The Dresden Codex (German: Dresdner Kodex, Latin: Codex Dresdensis) is one of four Mayan manuscript books found that have survived to this day. Kept in the book museum of the Saxon State and University Library in Dresden.

The manuscript was acquired in Vienna from an unknown person in 1739 by the chief librarian of the Dresden Electoral Library I. K. Götze. It is a manuscript dating from 1200-1250. Consists of 39 sheets, with inscriptions on both sides. The sheets of paper, made from ficus bark, measure approximately 20.5 x 10 cm and were glued together in the form of leporello. The length when unfolded was approximately 3.5 m. Currently, the manuscript is exhibited in the museum in the form of two parts - 20 and 19 sheets. The Dresden Codex is the only Mayan manuscript available to visitors for free viewing.

Contains a series of numbers that Richard Feynman interpreted as various astronomical data