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All Sacred Texts in the Codex

Every sacred texts in the Codex, drawn from all 13 traditions.

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Traditions
37 entries

A

The AeneidRome's National EpicVirgil's unfinished epic of Aeneas's flight from Troy and the founding of Rome — composed for Augustus, nearly burned at its author's own request.Sacred Text · RomanAtrahasisThe Exceedingly WiseThe Old Babylonian flood epic — the fullest account of why the gods nearly drowned humanity, and the source behind Gilgamesh's own flood story.Sacred Text · Mesopotamian

B

The Bhagavad GitaThe Song of the LordEighteen chapters embedded in the Mahabharata where Krishna counsels Arjuna — read, translated and argued over more than any other Hindu text.Sacred Text · HinduThe Books of Chilam BalamThe Jaguar Priest's BooksColonial Yucatec Maya town books mixing prophecy, history, medicine and Christian material — named for a jaguar-priest said to have foreseen the Spanish.Sacred Text · Mayan

C

The Codex BorgiaA Pre-Conquest Book of FateA pre-conquest screenfold of gods and days, painted for diviners to read fate — one of the few Mexican books that survived the conquest untouched.Sacred Text · AztecCulhwch and OlwenThe Oldest Arthurian TaleWales's earliest surviving Arthur story: a cursed suitor, an impossible bride-price, and Arthur's warband of superhuman heroes hunting a giant enchanted boar.Sacred Text · Arthurian

D

The Dresden CodexThe Maya Book of VenusThe oldest surviving book of the Americas — a Maya screenfold of astronomical tables, deciphered by a Dresden librarian, that survived a 1945 firestorm.Sacred Text · Mayan

E

The Egyptian Book of the DeadSpells for Going Forth by DayThe New Kingdom funerary spells the Egyptians called "Going Forth by Day" — copied for the dead, and renamed the Book of the Dead by Lepsius in 1842.Sacred Text · EgyptianEnuma ElishWhen on HighThe Babylonian creation epic — seven tablets recited each New Year, telling how Marduk defeated Tiamat and became king of the gods.Sacred Text · MesopotamianThe Epic of GilgameshHe Who Saw the DeepThe world's oldest surviving epic — five Sumerian poems welded into an Akkadian masterpiece, lost for two thousand years until an 1872 tablet made headlines.Sacred Text · Mesopotamian

F

Fengshen Yanyi (Investiture of the Gods)The War That Made the GodsThe Ming novel that restaged the fall of the Shang dynasty as heaven's founding war, promoting 365 of its dead into a brand-new celestial bureaucracy.Sacred Text · ChineseThe Florentine CodexSahagun's Encyclopedia of the Aztec WorldThe 16th-century Nahuatl-Spanish encyclopedia of Aztec life and gods, compiled by a friar with Nahua scholars — the single richest source on Mexica myth.Sacred Text · Aztec

H

Historia Regum BritanniaeThe History of the Kings of BritainGeoffrey of Monmouth's 1136 pseudo-history that invented most of the Arthur legend as we know it, and was believed as literal fact for four centuries.Sacred Text · Arthurian

I

Idylls of the KingTennyson's ArthuriadTennyson's Victorian retelling of the Arthur story in blank verse, published across 26 years — the most influential English version of the legend after Malory.Sacred Text · ArthurianThe IliadThe Wrath of AchillesHomer's epic of the final weeks of the Trojan War, opening with Achilles's rage and closing with the ransom of Hector's body.Sacred Text · Greek

J

Journey to the WestChina's Pilgrimage NovelThe Ming novel that sent a monk and three monster disciples across demon country for Buddhist scripture — and gave Sun Wukong to the world.Sacred Text · Chinese

K

The KojikiRecords of Ancient MattersJapan's oldest surviving chronicle, presented to the throne in 712 from one court reciter's memory — the deepest source for the Codex's kami and early emperors.Sacred Text · Japanese

L

Le Morte d'ArthurThe Death of ArthurThomas Malory's 15th-century compilation of the whole Arthurian legend, printed by Caxton in 1485 and rediscovered in a lost manuscript in 1934.Sacred Text · ArthurianLebor Gabala Erenn (The Book of Invasions)The Book of the Taking of IrelandA medieval synthetic history of Ireland: six waves of settlers, the Tuatha De Danann, and the Gaelic Milesians, engineered to answer to the Bible.Sacred Text · Celtic

M

The MabinogionEleven Tales, One MisnomerEleven medieval Welsh tales — Four Branches, native stories, Arthurian romances — bundled under a title that scholars agree is a 19th-century mistake.Sacred Text · CelticThe MahabharataThe Longest PoemRoughly 100,000 verses attributed to the sage Vyasa — the frame for most of Hindu myth, including the Bhagavad Gita, and still the longest epic poem known.Sacred Text · Hindu

N

The Nihon ShokiChronicles of JapanJapan's first official state history, finished in 720 in formal Chinese for a court that wanted its myths and its chronology to impress foreign readers.Sacred Text · Japanese

O

The Odyssey (Homer's Epic)Odysseus's Ten-Year HomecomingHomer's epic of Odysseus's ten-year voyage home from Troy, the founding adventure story of Western literature and the subject of a 2026 film.Sacred Text · GreekOvid's MetamorphosesRome's Epic of TransformationOvid's 15-book Latin epic of transformation myths — the single work that shaped how the post-classical West came to know Greek and Roman mythology.Sacred Text · Roman

P

The Poetic EddaThe Elder EddaAnonymous Old Norse poems on gods and heroes, preserved in one 13th-century manuscript — the primary source for most of what survives of Norse myth.Sacred Text · NorseThe Popol VuhThe K'iche' Book of CouncilThe K'iche' Maya "Book of Council" — creation, the Hero Twins, and a dynasty's history, saved by one Dominican friar's copy of a lost original.Sacred Text · MayanThe Primary Chronicle (Tale of Bygone Years)Rus' Telling Its Own Origin StoryThe founding chronicle of Kyivan Rus', c. 1113 - the only narrative source for Vladimir's pagan pantheon of 980 and its fall eight years later.Sacred Text · SlavicThe Prose EddaSnorri's EddaSnorri Sturluson's 13th-century handbook of Norse myth and poetics, in four parts — the fullest surviving guide to the gods, written to keep old poetry legible.Sacred Text · NorseThe Pyramid TextsThe Oldest Religious Texts on EarthThe oldest surviving body of religious literature on Earth — spells carved inside Old Kingdom pyramids to launch the king into the sky as a god.Sacred Text · Egyptian

R

Rabinal AchiDance of the TrumpetsA pre-conquest K'iche' Maya dance-drama of capture and sacrifice, still performed each January in Guatemala and honored by UNESCO as intangible heritage.Sacred Text · MayanThe RamayanaValmiki's EpicValmiki's Sanskrit epic of Rama's exile and Sita's rescue — one telling among dozens across Asia, critically re-edited only in the twentieth century.Sacred Text · HinduThe RigvedaThe First of the Four VedasTen books of hymns to Agni, Indra and Soma — the oldest surviving Sanskrit text, kept by memory alone for two millennia before it was ever written down.Sacred Text · Hindu

S

Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas)China's Book of Strange LandsChina's oldest surviving catalogue of mountains, monsters, and gods — a text nobody can name an author for, and half this Codex's bestiary depends on.Sacred Text · Chinese

T

Tain Bo Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley)The Ulster Cycle's Central SagaIreland's longest medieval saga: Queen Medb invades Ulster for a bull, and Cu Chulainn holds the fords alone against her army.Sacred Text · CelticThe Tale of Igor's CampaignAn Epic That Vanished in the Same Fire That Made It FamousA 12th-century epic of a failed raid, its only manuscript burned in Moscow in 1812, and the two-century forgery debate that followed it.Sacred Text · SlavicTheogony (Hesiod's Genealogy of the Gods)The Birth of the GodsHesiod's archaic poem tracing the gods from primordial Chaos to the reign of Zeus, the closest thing Greek religion has to an official genealogy.Sacred Text · Greek

V

Volsunga SagaThe Saga of Sigurd and the NiflungsThe 13th-century Icelandic saga that turns scattered eddic poems about Sigurd, Brynhild and cursed gold into one continuous, doom-laden family history.Sacred Text · Norse