Codex Borgia

The Codex Borgia (or Borgia Codex or Codex Yoalli Ehecatl) is a Mesoamerican ritual and divinatory manuscript. It is generally believed to have been written before the Spanish conquest of Mexico, somewhere within what is now today southern or western Puebla. The Codex Borgia is a member of, and gives its name to, the Borgia Group of manuscripts.

The codex is made of animal skins folded into 39 sheets. Each sheet is a square 27 cm by 27 cm (11x11 inches), for a total length of nearly 11 meters (35 feet). All but the end sheets are painted on both sides, providing 76 pages. The codex is read from right to left.

The Codex Borgia is named after the Italian Cardinal Stefano Borgia, who owned it before it was acquired by the Vatican Library. In 2004 Maarten Jansen and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez proposed that it be given the indigenous name Codex Yoalli Ehecatl, Nahuatl for "Night and Wind", although it is not certain that its creators were Nahuas.