Case file · Folklore / legend
The Popol Vuh is copied, Chichicastenango
Around 1701 Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez copied and translated a K'iche' Maya book in Chichicastenango, preserving the Popol Vuh, the creation story of the Hero Twins and the underworld Xibalba.
1701 CE · 14.94, -91.11 · status: official
The account
The K'iche' original, written in Latin letters in the mid-1500s, is lost; Ximénez's manuscript is now at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Its accounts of the gods' failed attempts to make humans from mud and wood before maize are central to Maya studies.