1 to 5, adding, however,
little of moment, but expatiating on Mexican painting and hieroglyphic
writing in general. On page 4 he says:

"'Our royal library has this superiority over all others, that it
possesses this rare treasure. It was obtained a few years ago at Vienna
from a private person, for nothing, as being an unknown thing. It is
doubtless from the personal effects of a Spaniard, who had either been in
Mexico himself or whose ancestors had been there.'

"On page 5 Goetze says:

"'In the Vatican library there are some leaves of similar Mexican
writing, as stated by Mr. Joseph Simonius Asseman, who saw our copy four
years ago at Rome.'

"Goetze therefore received the manuscript as a present on his journey to
Italy at Vienna and took it with him to Rome. Unfortunately we know
nothing concerning its former possessor. A more accurate report of the
journey does not seem to exist; at least the principal state archives at
Dresden contain nothing concerning it, nor does the General Directory of
the Royal Collections. As appears from the above note, Goetze did not know
that the Vatican Codex was of an entirely different nature from the
Dresden Codex.

"In spite of the high value which Goetze set upon the manuscript, it
remained unnoticed and unmentioned far into our century. Even Johann
Christoph Adelung, who as head librarian had it in his custody and who
died in 1806, does not mention it in his Mithridates, of which that part
which treats of American languages (III, 3) was published only in 1816,
after Adelung's death, by J. S. Vater. This would have been a fitting
occasion to mention the Dresden Codex, because in this volume (pp. 13 et
seq.) the Maya language is largely treated of, and further on the other
languages of Anahuac. Of course it was not possible at that time to know
that our manuscript belongs to the former.

"After Goetze, the first to mention our codex is C. A. Boettiger, in his
Ideas on Archaeology (Dresden, 1811, pp. 20, 21), without, however, saying
anything that we did not already know from Goetze. Still Boettiger rendered
great and twofold service: first, as we shall see presently, because
through him Alexander von Humboldt obtained some notice of the
manuscript, and, second, because Boettiger's note, as he himself explains
in the Dresden Anzeiger, No. 133, p. 5, 1832, induced Lord Kingsborough
to have the manuscript copied in Dresden.

"We now come to A. von Humboldt. His Views of the Cor