The
Dresden Codex, also known as the
Codex Dresdensis, is a
pre-Columbian Maya book of the eleventh or twelfth century of the Yucatecan Maya in
Chichén Itzá. This
Maya codex is believed to be a copy of an original text of some three or four hundred years earlier. It is the oldest book written in the Americas known to historians. Of the hundreds of books that were used in Mesoamerica before the Spanish conquest, it is one of only 15 that have survived to the present day.