down from priest to priest and each priest who received the book added a section in his own hand. The images in the Madrid Codex depict rituals such as human sacrifice and invoking rainfall, as well as everyday activities such as beekeeping, hunting, warfare, and weaving. Other images show deities smoking sikar (see tables 25, 26, and 34 of the Codex), similar to modern cigars made of tobacco leaves. Origin Some scholars, such as Michael Coe and Justin Kerr, have suggested that the Madrid Codex dates to after the Spanish conquest, but the evidence overwhelmingly favors a pre-conquest date for the document. The codex likely was produced in Yucatán. The language used in the document is Yucatecan, a group of Mayan languages that includes Yucatec, Itza, Lacandon, and Mopan; these languages are distributed across the Yucatán Peninsula, including Chiapas, Belize, and the Guatemalan department of Petén. J. Eric Thompson was of the opinion that the Madrid Codex came from western Yucatán and dated to between 1250 and 1450 AD. Scholars also suggest that the codex may have originated from the Petén region of Guatemala. Other scholars have expressed a differing opinion, noting that the codex is similar in style to murals found at Chichen Itza, Mayapan, and sites on the east coast such as Santa Rita, Tancah, and Tulum. Two paper fragments incorporated into the front and last pages of the codex contain Spanish writing, which led Thompson to suggest that a Spanish priest acquired the document at Tayasal in Petén. Discovery The codex was discovered in Spain in the 1860s, and was divided into two parts of differing sizes that were found in different locations. The codex receives its alternate name of the Tro-Cortesianus Codex after the two parts that were separately discovered. Early Mayanist scholar Léon de Rosny realised that both fragments were part of the same book. The larger fragment, the Troano Codex, was published with an erroneous translation in 1869–1870 by French scholar Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, who found it in the possession of Juan de Tro y Ortolano in Madrid in 1866 and first identified it as a Maya book. Ownership of the Troano Codex passed to the Museo Arqueológico Nacional ("National Archaeological Museum") in 1888. Madrid resident Juan de Palacios tried to sell the smaller fragment, the Cortesianus Codex, in 1867. The Museo Arqueológico Nacional acquired the Cortesianus Codex from book-collector José Ignacio