The Popol Vuh was written down in the K'iche' language, in the Latin alphabet, by anonymous members of the K'iche' Maya nobility of highland Guatemala, most likely between about 1554 and 1558, working from older traditions and probably from a hieroglyphic book that they say could no longer be seen. Their manuscript is lost; the text survives in a copy made about 1701 by the Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez, parish priest of Chichicastenango, who added a Spanish translation. Lewis Spence (1874-1955), a Scottish journalist, poet and folklorist, wrote widely on the myths of Mexico, Central America and Peru; his short study of 1908 summarizes the first four books from the French of Brasseur de Bourbourg and the Spanish of Ximénez and adds his own commentary.
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“Over a universe wrapped in the gloom of a dense and primeval night passed the god Hurakan, the mighty wind. He called out "earth," and the solid land appeared.”
“These young men were busied at Xibalba with paying fitting funeral honours to their father and uncle, who now mounted to heaven and became the sun and moon, whilst the four hundred youths slain by Zipacna became the stars.”
c. 1554-1558; Spence 1908 · Renaissance Early Modern · Collection
The Popol Vuh, the Book of the Mat or Council Book, is the sacred and historical book of the K'iche' Maya of highland Guatemala, written in K'iche' by anonymous nobles in the 1550s and preserved in Francisco Ximénez's copy of about 1701. The library's text is not a full translation but Lewis Spence's 1908 English study, which retells and partly translates the first books from Brasseur de Bourbourg's French and Ximénez's Spanish and then comments on them.