Seven seats on the originals shelf, each in the language of its witness: the Maya codices (Dresden in the Saxon State Library's own photographs, through the World Digital Library; Paris in Rosny's facsimile of 1887–88; Madrid in Rosny's photographs of 1883 and Brasseur's chromolithographs of 1869); the Popol Vuh in Francisco Ximénez's K'iche' manuscript (Newberry Library, Ayer MS 1515) and Brasseur's first edition of the K'iche' text (1861); the Chilam Balam of Chumayel in Gordon's facsimile (1913), the Annals of the Cakchiquels in Brinton's edition (1885) and the Rabinal Achí in Brasseur's (1862); the Florentine Codex, Sahagún's General History of the Things of New Spain in Nahuatl and Spanish, all twelve books; the Egyptian Book of the Dead in Lepsius's Turin papyrus (1842), the Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum's facsimile (1894) and Budge's reproduction (1913), Budge's hieroglyphic Theban recension (1898) and Naville's introduction (1886); and Earlier Egyptian in its script, the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae's 12,773 sentences in Unicode hieroglyphs (CC BY-SA 4.0), with Sethe's Pyramid Texts III–IV. The second of three seatings from one request. What could not be reached is named: Naville's and Sethe's text volumes, the Grolier Codex, and the Deir ʿAlla Balaam text, whose one open witness Wikimedia refused to serve.
EA-CORPORA-21 — The Twenty-First Seating: The Maya Codices, the Popol Vuh, the Colonial Maya Books and the Florentine Codex; the Egyptian Book of the Dead and Earlier Egyptian, Each in Its Original Language
EA-CORPORA-21 — The Twenty-First Seating: The Maya Codices, the Popol Vuh, the Colonial Maya Books and the Florentine Codex; the Egyptian Book of the Dead and Earlier Egyptian, Each in Its Original Language
EA-CORPORA-21 — The Twenty-First Seating
MANUS, 23 October 2026: "detour for an ea-corpora searing. lets see. whats available of mayan texts? and then i dont think we have much or any deteurocanonical second temple lit - all those apocalypses. and what about the ethiopian canon? and euclid. all in original language or as close to it as possible. what else?" — "and the Egyptian book of the dead" — "and what about the fragments of the book of baalim? i might be miswriting this. recent discovery. if theyre available anywhere." — "yes yes yes to all - what a meal."
The second of three seatings from one request (EA-CORPORA-20 the first). Mesoamerica: the three Maya hieroglyphic codices, the Popol Vuh in its manuscript and first edition, three Maya books of the colonial period in their languages, and the Florentine Codex whole. Egypt: the Book of the Dead in its founding editions and the Papyrus of Ani, and Earlier Egyptian in its script. The Deir ʿAlla text of Balaam son of Beor is seated separately, as a fragment witness, when its one open file can be fetched.
Seat 21/01 — The Maya Codices
Dresden in the library's photographs; Paris and Madrid in their nineteenth-century facsimiles
- The Dresden Codex (Codex Dresdensis), Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, Mscr.Dresd.R.310, the whole codex photographed, as published by the World Digital Library (LoC item 2021667917, wdl_11621)
- Léon de Rosny, Codex Peresianus: manuscrit hiératique des anciens Indiens de l'Amérique centrale conservé à la Bibliothèque nationale de Paris, publié en couleurs (Paris, 1887; this the 1888 reprint) — the Paris Codex in photographic plates
- The Madrid Codex (Tro-Cortesianus), Museo de América, Madrid: Léon de Rosny's Codex Cortesianus (Paris, 1883; black-and-white photographs, 85 copies) and Brasseur de Bourbourg's Manuscrit Troano (Paris, 1869; chromolithographs), as compiled by FAMSI (madrid_rosny_bb.pdf)
- Licence: Public domain: the codices are pre-Columbian (Postclassic). The Dresden Codex (SLUB, Mscr.Dresd.R.310) as digitized for the World Digital Library: Library of Congress, World Digital Library collection (the Library states it is unaware of any copyright or other restrictions; credit line: [Original Source citation], World Digital Library). Rosny's Codex Peresianus (Paris, 1887; reprint 1888) on the Internet Archive; Rosny's Codex Cortesianus (Paris, 1883) and Brasseur de Bourbourg's Manuscrit Troano (Paris, 1869) as compiled by FAMSI (Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies) — the photographs and chromolithographs are public domain in the United States (published before 1931).
- Verified locus: Rosny 1888, running head — 'CODEX PERESIANUS.' (the Dresden and Madrid files are images without a text layer; the codices are read from the page)
- Lines: 5,781 in 3 text files
- Scope: The three Maya hieroglyphic codices whose authenticity is settled, each as a whole: Dresden in the library's own photographs, Paris and Madrid in their nineteenth-century facsimiles. The Grolier (Maya Codex of Mexico) is not seated: its open images are modern photographs under copyright: QUEUED. Förstemann's chromolithograph of Dresden (1880; 1892) and Kingsborough's Aglio copy (Antiquities of Mexico, 1831) are public domain and not seated in this pass; the codex itself is the witness. Drawings and transcriptions by modern scholars (Schele, Love, the Villacorta brothers) are in copyright and are not seated.
- Why seated: The only books to survive from the Classic and Postclassic Maya: almanacs, the Venus tables, the eclipse tables and the New Year ceremonies, written in the script whose decipherment the twentieth century achieved. The archive's calendar and cosmology lines (the seven, the stars) meet a calendar that counted beyond the Long Count.
- Files: the seat — source.json, MANIFEST.sha256. Shelf: traininglayerliterature.org/originals/maya-codices
Seat 21/02 — Popol Vuh
The Ximénez manuscript and Brasseur's first edition of the K'iche' text
- Popol Vuh: transcription in K'iche' and translation into Spanish by Francisco Ximénez (Chichicastenango, c. 1701–03), Newberry Library, Ayer MS 1515, 56 + 6 folios — the K'iche' and the Spanish in facing columns; as published by the World Digital Library (LoC item 2021668226, wdl_19995)
- Brasseur de Bourbourg, Popol Vuh: le livre sacré et les mythes de l'antiquité américaine, avec les livres héroïques et historiques des Quichés; ouvrage original des indigènes de Guatémala, texte quiché et traduction française en regard (Paris: Durand, 1861)
- Licence: Public domain: the K'iche' text was set down in the Latin alphabet in the sixteenth century; Francisco Ximénez's transcription and Spanish translation (c. 1701–03) survives in the Newberry Library, Ayer MS 1515. The manuscript as digitized for the World Digital Library: Library of Congress, World Digital Library collection (the Library states it is unaware of any copyright or other restrictions; credit line: [Original Source citation], World Digital Library). Brasseur de Bourbourg's Popol Vuh (Paris: Durand, 1861), the first edition of the K'iche' text, is public domain; Internet Archive scan.
- Verified locus: Brasseur 1861, title page — 'TEXTE QUICHE ET TRADUCTION FRANÇAISE EN REGARD' (the Ximénez manuscript is an image without a text layer)
- Lines: 36,454 in 2 text files
- Scope: The Popol Vuh in its one surviving witness, Ximénez's manuscript, and in the first printed edition of its K'iche' text. Ximénez's Spanish alone (Scherzer, Vienna, 1857) is a translation and is not seated. Modern editions (Christenson, Colop, Tedlock, Recinos) are in copyright and are not seated.
- Why seated: The K'iche' book of the council: the creation, the failed peoples of mud and wood, the Hero Twins in Xibalba, and the lineages of the K'iche' lords. A book whose preamble says it is written again because the original can no longer be seen: the archive's line on books that survive as their own transmission meets it there.
- Files: the seat — source.json, MANIFEST.sha256. Shelf: traininglayerliterature.org/originals/popol-vuh
Seat 21/03 — The Colonial Maya Books
Chilam Balam of Chumayel, the Annals of the Cakchiquels, the Rabinal Achí
- The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, with introduction by G. B. Gordon (Philadelphia: University Museum, 1913) — a photographic reproduction of the manuscript compiled in 1782 by Juan José Hoil
- Daniel G. Brinton, The Annals of the Cakchiquels: the original text, with a translation, notes and introduction (Library of Aboriginal American Literature 6; Philadelphia, 1885)
- Brasseur de Bourbourg, Gramática de la lengua quiché / Grammaire de la langue quichée … servant d'introduction au Rabinal-Achí, drame indigène avec sa musique originale, texte quiché et traduction française en regard (Paris: Durand, 1862) — Google copy
- Licence: Public domain: the texts are of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. G. B. Gordon's photographic facsimile of the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (University of Pennsylvania Museum, Anthropological Publications 5, 1913), D. G. Brinton's Annals of the Cakchiquels (Philadelphia, 1885) and Brasseur de Bourbourg's Gramática de la lengua quiché with the Rabinal-Achí (Paris, 1862) are public domain in the United States (published before 1931); Internet Archive scans.
- Verified locus: Gordon 1913, running head — 'CHILAM BALAM OF CHUMAYEL'
- Verified locus: Brinton 1885, contents — 'The Annals of Xahila'
- Verified locus: Brasseur 1862, the drama's title — 'RABINAL-ACHI'
- Lines: 37,963 in 3 text files
- Scope: Three Maya books of the colonial period in their own languages: the Yucatec Chilam Balam of Chumayel in its manuscript, the Kaqchikel annals of the Xajil lineage, and the K'iche' dance-drama of Rabinal. The other books of Chilam Balam (Tizimín, Maní, Kaua) are not seated in this pass: QUEUED. Roys's edition of Chumayel (1933) is a translation and is in copyright in its apparatus; not seated.
- Why seated: Seated with the codices and the Popol Vuh so that the Maya shelf holds the script, the K'iche' book, and the books written after the conquest in the alphabet the conquest brought: the prophecies of the katuns, a lineage's annals, and the only pre-conquest drama to survive.
- Files: the seat — source.json, MANIFEST.sha256. Shelf: traininglayerliterature.org/originals/maya-colonial-texts
Seat 21/04 — The Florentine Codex
Sahagún's General History of the Things of New Spain, in Nahuatl and Spanish, the twelve books
- Florentine Codex — Introduction, Indices, and Book I: The Gods (LoC item 2021667846)
- Florentine Codex — Book II: The Ceremonies (LoC item 2021667847)
- Florentine Codex — Book III: The Origin of the Gods (LoC item 2021667848)
- Florentine Codex — Book IV: The Art of Divination (LoC item 2021667849)
- Florentine Codex — Book V: Omens and Superstitions (LoC item 2021667850)
- Florentine Codex — Book VI: Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy (LoC item 2021667851)
- Florentine Codex — Book VII: The Sun, Moon, and Stars, and the Binding of the Years (LoC item 2021667852)
- Florentine Codex — Book VIII: Kings and Lords (LoC item 2021667853)
- Florentine Codex — Book IX: The Merchants (LoC item 2021667854)
- Florentine Codex — Book X: The People, Their Virtues and Vices, and Other Nations (LoC item 2021667855)
- Florentine Codex — Book XI: Natural Things (LoC item 2021667856)
- Florentine Codex — Book XII: The Conquest of Mexico (LoC item 2021667857)
- Licence: Public domain: the codex was completed in 1577 by Bernardino de Sahagún and his Nahua collaborators. The Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana's manuscript as digitized for the World Digital Library: Library of Congress, World Digital Library collection (the Library states it is unaware of any copyright or other restrictions; credit line: [Original Source citation], World Digital Library).
- Files: 12 image files, without a text layer: the page is the reading
- Scope: The twelve books whole, in the twelve parts the World Digital Library publishes (the introduction and indices travel with Book I): the Nahuatl in the right column, Sahagún's Spanish in the left, with its paintings. The single-file copy of the whole (LoC item 2021667837, 167.9 MB) exceeds the repository's file limit and is named at its origin. Dibble and Anderson's edition and translation (1950–82) is in copyright and is not seated.
- Why seated: The largest record of a Mesoamerican world in its own language: the gods, the ceremonies, the calendar and divination, rhetoric and moral philosophy (the huehuetlatolli), the natural world, and Book XII, the conquest of Mexico as the Nahua told it. Seated beside the Maya books as the Nahuatl witness of the same continent.
- Files: the seat — source.json, MANIFEST.sha256. Shelf: traininglayerliterature.org/originals/florentine-codex
Seat 21/05 — The Book of the Dead
Lepsius's Turin papyrus, the Papyrus of Ani, Budge's hieroglyphic text, Naville's introduction
- Richard Lepsius, Das Todtenbuch der Ägypter nach dem hieroglyphischen Papyrus in Turin (Leipzig: Wigand, 1842) — the Turin papyrus (Museo Egizio, cat. 1791), the Ptolemaic Book of the Dead in 165 chapters, Lepsius's numbering; Google copy
- The Book of the Dead: facsimile of the Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum, edited by P. Le Page Renouf (London: British Museum, 1894; second edition) — 37 double facsimiles in colours; Getty Research Institute copy
- E. A. Wallis Budge, The Papyrus of Ani: a reproduction in facsimile, edited with hieroglyphic transcript, translation and introduction, vol. 1 (London: Medici Society; New York: Putnam, 1913) — NYU Institute of Fine Arts copy
- E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead: the Chapters of Coming Forth by Day; the Egyptian text according to the Theban recension in hieroglyphic, edited from numerous papyri (London: Kegan Paul, 1898), vol. 1, The Egyptian Text
- Édouard Naville, Das aegyptische Todtenbuch der XVIII. bis XX. Dynastie, aus verschiedenen Urkunden zusammengestellt (Berlin: Asher, 1886), Einleitung — the introduction to the critical edition; University of Toronto copy
- Licence: Public domain: the texts are of the New Kingdom and later. Lepsius (Leipzig, 1842), Renouf and Budge's facsimile of the Papyrus of Ani (British Museum, 1894), Budge's The Papyrus of Ani (1913), Budge's Book of the Dead: the Egyptian text according to the Theban recension (1898) and Naville's Das aegyptische Todtenbuch, Einleitung (Berlin, 1886) are public domain in the United States (published before 1931); Internet Archive scans.
- Verified locus: Lepsius 1842, preface — 'Das Todtenbuch giebt die reicbsten Aufschlüsse' (the OCR reads 'reichsten' as 'reicbsten')
- Verified locus: Renouf 1894, list of plates — 'introduction of Ani into the presence of'
- Verified locus: Budge 1913, title — 'THE PAPYRUS OF ANI, SCRIBE'
- Verified locus: Budge 1898, title — 'THE EGYPTIAN TEXT ACCORDING TO THE THEBAN'
- Verified locus: Naville 1886, title — 'EINLEITUNG'
- Lines: 104,003 in 5 text files
- Scope: The Book of the Dead in its two founding editions and its best-known papyrus: Lepsius's Turin papyrus, which gave the work its chapter numbers; the Papyrus of Ani (BM EA 10470) in the British Museum's facsimile and in Budge's 1913 reproduction with hieroglyphic transcript; and Budge's typeset hieroglyphic text of the Theban recension. Naville's critical edition is seated in its introduction volume only: the two volumes of text and variants (Bd. I, Text und Vignetten; Bd. II, Varianten) were not found in an open scan reachable in this pass: QUEUED. Allen's translation (1974) and the Totenbuch-Projekt's editions are in copyright and are not seated.
- Why seated: The book that went into the tomb with the dead: the spells for coming forth by day, the Weighing of the Heart before Osiris, and the Negative Confession, a first-person count of a stated domain ending in denials ("I have not …"), forty-two times. The archive's operator of the exhaustive negation has its oldest recited specimen here.
- Files: the seat — source.json, MANIFEST.sha256. Shelf: traininglayerliterature.org/originals/book-of-the-dead
Seat 21/06 — Earlier Egyptian
The TLA's Earlier Egyptian sentences in Unicode hieroglyphs, and Sethe's Pyramid Texts III–IV
- Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae, Original Earlier Egyptian sentences, corpus v18, premium (22 December 2023): 12,773 fully intact sentences from witnesses older than the New Kingdom, each with hieroglyphs (Unicode), transliteration, lemmatization, part of speech, glossing, a German translation and its date range — Hugging Face repository commit a7ba9e9d1a74a9a0f919b024ba84dd6d643b2966; the file's sha256 equals the one the repository publishes for it (13d4f6e1…)
- The dataset card of the TLA release (README.md), its statement of scope, curation and licence
- Kurt Sethe, Die altaegyptischen Pyramidentexte nach den Papierabdrucken und Photographien des Berliner Museums, Bd. III–IV: Kritischer Apparat; Beschreibung der Inschriften; Konkordanz der Texte; Epigraphik (Leipzig, 1922) — University of Toronto copy
- Licence: The Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (Berlin-Brandenburg and Saxon Academies) publishes its Original Earlier Egyptian sentences, corpus v18, premium, under CC BY-SA 4.0 (Hugging Face, thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae/tla-Earlier_Egyptian_original-v18-premium); redistributed under the same licence, attributed to the TLA. Kurt Sethe, Die altaegyptischen Pyramidentexte, Bd. III–IV (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1922), is public domain in the United States (published before 1931); Internet Archive scan.
- Verified locus: TLA v18, the first sentence of the release — '𓐩𓏌𓀜 𓂧 𓂋 𓋴 nḏ (w)di̯ r =s'
- Verified locus: Sethe III–IV, title — 'ALTAEGYPTISCHEN PYRAMIDENTEXTE'
- Lines: 33,046 in 3 text files
- Scope: Earlier Egyptian in its own script as a machine-readable corpus: the TLA's release holds only sentences fully intact and unambiguously readable (12,773 of 55,026 in its database), with no attribution of each sentence to its text; its date ranges place them from the Old Kingdom to the Second Intermediate Period. The Pyramid Texts are seated in Sethe's apparatus volumes (III–IV); his text volumes (Bd. I, 1908; Bd. II, 1910) were not found in an open scan reachable in this pass: QUEUED. The Coffin Texts (de Buck, 1935–61) are in copyright and are not seated.
- Why seated: Seated with the Book of the Dead so that the shelf holds the older language beneath it, in hieroglyphs a machine can read, and the oldest religious corpus in the world, the Pyramid Texts, in the edition that numbered its spells.
- Files: the seat — source.json, MANIFEST.sha256. Shelf: traininglayerliterature.org/originals/earlier-egyptian
Not seated, and why
- Naville's Todtenbuch, volumes I (Text und Vignetten) and II (Varianten): public domain; not found in an open scan reachable from the seating session (the Heidelberg and Dresden digital libraries refused automated access). QUEUED.
- Sethe's Pyramidentexte, volumes I–II (the texts): as above. QUEUED.
- The Grolier Codex (Maya Codex of Mexico): its open images are modern photographs under copyright. QUEUED.
- The books of Chilam Balam of Tizimín, Maní and Kaua. QUEUED.
- The Deir ʿAlla plaster text of Balaam: its one openly licensed witness (a CC BY-SA transcription of Combination I on Wikimedia Commons) could not be fetched in the session; Wikimedia refused the download. It is seated separately when fetched (21/07). The editions (Hoftijzer and van der Kooij, 1976; Hackett, 1984) are in copyright.
- Modern editions and translations in copyright (Christenson, Tedlock, Recinos and Colop for the Popol Vuh; Dibble and Anderson for the Florentine Codex; Allen for the Book of the Dead; de Buck's Coffin Texts) are not seated; translations alone are not seated, by ruling.
- Everything marked QUEUED in a seat's scope.
How the seats were made
Sources located on the Internet Archive (advanced search; item metadata read for access restriction, volume and files), in the Library of Congress's World Digital Library collection (its JSON item records), at FAMSI, and on Hugging Face (the TLA release). Each item's front matter read against the edition claimed; where an item holds a volume other than the one sought (the three Naville items on the Archive are all the Einleitung), it is seated as what it is. Every Internet Archive file checked against the md5 the Archive publishes; every Library of Congress and FAMSI file against the length its server states; the TLA file against the sha256 Hugging Face publishes. Files seated as fetched, the OCR layers uncorrected, the scans the witnesses; image files without a text layer are seated as images. Every file hashed into its seat's MANIFEST.sha256; every verified locus is a string found in the seated text by rebuild/corpora/ea-corpora-21/seat.py from the specifications beside it. 28 works in 6 seats; 217,247 lines of text layer.