The Paris Codex (also known as the Codex Peresianus and Codex Pérez) is one of four surviving generally accepted pre-Columbian Maya books dating to the Postclassic Period of Mesoamerican chronology (c. 900–1521 AD). The document is very poorly preserved and has suffered considerable damage to the page edges, resulting in the loss of some of the text. The codex largely relates to a cycle of thirteen 20-year kʼatuns and includes details of Maya astronomical signs. The Paris Codex is generally considered to have been painted in western Yucatán, probably at Mayapan. It has been tentatively dated to around 1450, in the Late Postclassic period (AD 1200–1525). More recently an earlier date of 1185 has been suggested, placing the document in the Early Postclassic (AD 900–1200). However, the astronomical and calendrical information within the codex are consistent with a Classic period cycle from AD 731 to 987 indicating that the codex may be a copy of a much earlier document. The Paris Codex was acquired by the Bibliothèque Royale of Paris in 1832 and is currently held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, in the Département des Manuscrits, catalogued as Mexicain 386. Physical characteristics The codex consists of a strip measuring long by high, folded into 11 sheets painted on both sides, forming 22 pages total. An additional sheet is believed to have once existed, but became lost by the 19th century. The Paris Codex is very poorly preserved, comprising a number of fragments; the lime plaster coating of the codex is badly eroded at the edges, resulting in the destruction of its hieroglyphs and images except in the center of its pages. Content The content of the codex is mainly ritual in nature, and one side of the codex contains the patron deities and associated rituals for a cycle of thirteen kʼatuns (a 20-year Maya calendrical cycle). One fragment contains animals that represent astronomical signs along the ecliptic including a scorpion and a peccary; fragments of this Maya "zodiac" are depicted on two pages of the codex. Some pages of the codex are marked with annotations made with Latin characters. On one side of the codex the general format of each page largely follows the same arrangement, with a standing figure on the left hand side and a seated figure on the right hand side. Each page also contains the ajaw day glyph combined with a numerical coefficient,