Quarto. (12)ff, accordion-fold. One of thirty regular copies. Signed by the artist. A highly tactile printing of one of the few surviving texts of the K'iche' (formerly Quiché) Mayan people, the Popol Vuh, from which Kaldewey has excerpted the creation myth. The tale has been printed in brown ink, in transliterated K'iche', and is bordered by Mayan motifs printed in red. The paper is handmade from fig tree bark, and it and most other of the book's materials were made or found in Guatemala, which is the ancestral, pre-Columbian site of the K'iche'. A laid-in sheet provides an English translation, as well as the claim that the Popol Vuh is the oldest pre-Columbian book. This is not altogether true for a number of reasons, among them that the oldest surviving manuscript is from 1701 and was completed by a Spanish missionary, whose claims that he had recreated the document from an earlier source remain specious. Nevertheless, the Ximénez manuscript remains a important instance of the preservation of indigenous beliefs and practices in the age of colonialism. Accordion and translation sheet housed in dropback box, covered in green cloth and stamped with gold. Fine.