After nearly two decades of sitting in a cramped safety deposit box, a 16th century manuscript called crucial to understanding Mexican history has resurfaced—and scholars from Harvard are joining an effort to decipher the long-lost historical gem.

Scholars from Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center will join Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Anthropologia, to study, restore and publish their findings about the rare codex, which survived the Spaniards’ purge of manuscripts in the 16th century.

“The codex is, in terms of importance to scholars, like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls in a rural town in Mexico,” said Ann Seiferle-Valencia, a third year graduate student in anthropology who is writing a dissertation on the codex.

Rudenstine Professor for the Study of Latin America David Carrasco, who is coordinating the project, said Harvard will help coordinate and facilitate the completion of the project.

“We don’t always hear about Mexican scholarship as we should,” Seiferle-Valencia said. “The Rockefeller Center can...prevent the codex from being squirrelled away in an anthropology department.”

John H. Coatsworth, Gutman professor of Latin American Affairs and director of the David Rockefeller Center, announced the codex’s discovered last weekend at a luncheon where a color reproduction of the 16 panels of the codex served as the table centerpieces.

Harvard and Mexico will work together on the project, with Harvard mainly handling the research side and Mexican conservationists tackling the restoration, Carrasco said.

Carrasco said that they are already planning two conferences—one in Mexico and one in the U.S.—where scholars will present papers on the codex.

Carrasco said the scholars aim to return the codex to Cuauhtinchan, the place where it was originally made.

“We want the people of Cuauhtinchan to know their own history,” said Angeles Espinosa, the codex’s owner.

Codex Rediscovered

The codex has a long and murky history. In 1963 the codex was declared a national treasure of Mexico, but sometime after that it disappeared from the public eye—until Espinosa recovered it.

The codex, painted on indigenous paper, dates back to the 16th century and tells the story of a community through pictoral representations of its history.

In the 16th century Spanish explorers burned many documents—including many similar codices, Carrasco said.

Only four ethnographic codices remain, of which “this is the best and the most important,” Espinosa said.