| OCR Text |
Show maining patch of fur, and so suggests that very little change occured after that time. The surface of both covers shows the natural small wrinkles of the skin surface and the pits from which the hair follicles have now disappeared. There is surface damage in the form of rough surfaced grooves which resemble the marks caused by the pupae and grubs of clothes moths. They seem too small for tropical insect damage, and are present nowhere except in the surface of the two covers. It is to be presumed that this damage occurred while the document was in Europe for a century. The leather bound cover which Archbishop Laud prepared for the Codex has been attacked in a few places by woodworm, but the larvae never penetrated to the inner surface and the Codex is completely unaffected. The leather of the Codex is perforated in two areas, but in both cases this is due to the activity of fly larvae during the lifetime of the animal from which the skin was taken. The quality of the leather of the Codex is very different from the skin of any of the big cats. Taken in conjunction with the length of the four pieces, approximately 1 metre each, this limits the possibilities to some kind of deer skin. The softness makes it impossible to give a definite thickness but it is only between 1 and 2 mm. The preparation of the skin for writing involved the laying of a thick hard layer of lime paste. This has not been tested chemically. Many materials could have been used, such as burnt limestone, calcite, sea shells or even chalk. (Sahagun: Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Espafia: Book XI. Cap. 11. Para. 3). The material appears to have a very thin hard surface skin and this may have been achieved by painting the surface with a kind of lacquer of chia-seed oil. The final surface appears to have been glossy, but this is so fine that it looks more like burnishing after the surface was thoroughly dry. The effect is as if the document had been pressed between two sheets of heavy plate glass, but this is a untenable theory. Burnishing with a large flat surface perhaps something like a large obsidian mirror would give this effect. It presupposes, however, that the surface of the document was hard and dry before this took place, since there are hollower surfaces which are not burnished. |
