The pictures and glyphs were painted by skilled craftsmen using thin brushes and vegetable dyes. Black and red were the main colors used for many of the pages. Some pages have detailed backgrounds in shades of yellow, green, and the Mayan blue. The codex was written by eight different scribes, who all had their own writing style, glyph designs, and subject matter. History The Dresden Codex is described by historian J. Eric S. Thompson as writings of the indigenous people of the Yucatán Peninsula in southeastern Mexico. Maya historians Peter J. Schmidt, Mercedes de la Garza, and Enrique Nalda confirm this. Thompson further narrows the probable origin of the Dresden Codex to the area of Chichen Itza, because certain picture symbols in the codex are only found on monuments in that location. He also argues that the astronomical tables would support this as the place of origin. Thompson claims that the people of the Yucatán Peninsula were known to have done such studies around 1200 A.D. Thompson also notes the similar ceramic designs in the Chichen Itza area which are known to have ceased in the early thirteenth century. British historian Clive Ruggles suggests, based on the analyses of several scholars, that the Dresden Codex is a copy and was originally written between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Thompson narrows the date closer to 1200 to 1250. Maya archaeologist Linton Satterthwaite puts the date when it was made as no later than 1345. Johann Christian Götze (1692–1749), German theologian and director of the Royal Library at Dresden, purchased the codex from a private owner in Vienna in 1739 while traveling to Italy. Thompson speculates that the codex was sent as a tribute to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor by Hernán Cortés, governor of Mexico, since examples of local writings and other Maya items were sent to the king in 1519 when he was living in Vienna. Alexander von Humboldt published pages 47, 48 and 50–52 from the Dresden Codex in his 1810 atlas Vues des Cordillères et Monuments des Peuples Indigènes de l'Amérique, the first reproduction of any of its pages. The first copy of the codex was published by Lord Kingsborough in his 1831 Antiquities of Mexico. In 1828 Constantine Samuel Rafinesque had identified this book as being of Maya origin based on its glyphs looking like those found at Palenque. Historian Cyrus Thomas made a connection between the