Aztec codices in the context of "Huexotzinco Codex"

The Codex Mendoza is an Aztec codex, believed to have been created around the year 1541. It contains a history of both the Aztec rulers and their conquests as well as a description of the daily life of pre-conquest Aztec society. The codex is written using traditional Aztec pictograms with a translation and explanation of the text provided in Spanish. It is named after Don Antonio de Mendoza (1495–1552), the viceroy of New Spain, who supervised its creation and who was a leading patron of native artists.

Mendoza knew that the ravages of the conquest had destroyed multiple native artifacts, and that the craft traditions that generated them had been effaced. When the Spanish crown ordered Mendoza to provide evidence of the Aztec political and tribute system, he invited skilled artists and scribes who were being schooled at the Franciscan college in Tlatelolco to gather in a workshop under the supervision of Spanish priests where they could recreate the document for him and the King of Spain. The pictorial document that they produced became known as the Codex Mendoza: it consists of seventy-one folios made of Spanish paper measuring 20.6 × 30.6 centimeters (8.25 × 12.25 inches). The document is crafted in the native style, but it now is bound at a spine in the manner of European books.

Book burning is the deliberate destruction by fire of books or other written materials, usually carried out in a public context. The burning of books represents an element of censorship and usually proceeds from a cultural, religious, or political opposition to the materials in question. Book burning can be an act of contempt for the book's contents or author, intended to draw wider public attention to this opposition, or conceal the information contained in the text from being made public, such as diaries or ledgers. Burning and other methods of destruction are together known as biblioclasm or libricide.

In some cases, the destroyed works are irreplaceable and their burning constitutes a severe loss to cultural heritage. Examples include the burning of books and burying of scholars under China's Qin dynasty (213–210 BCE), the destruction of the House of Wisdom during the Mongol siege of Baghdad (1258), the destruction of Aztec codices by Itzcoatl (1430s), the burning of Maya codices on the order of bishop Diego de Landa (1562), and the burning of Jaffna Public Library in Sri Lanka (1981).

Diego Durán (c. 1537 – 1588) was a Dominican friar best known for his authorship of one of the earliest Western books on the history and culture of the Aztecs, The History of the Indies of New Spain, a book that was much criticised in his lifetime for helping the "heathen" maintain their culture.

Also known as the Durán Codex, The History of the Indies of New Spain was completed in about 1581. Durán also wrote Book of the Gods and Rites (1574–1576), and Ancient Calendar (c. 1579). He was fluent in Nahuatl, the Aztec language, and was therefore able to consult natives and Aztec codices as well as work done by earlier friars. His empathetic nature allowed him to gain the confidence of many native people who would not share their stories with other Europeans, and was able to document many previously unknown folktales and legends that make his work unique.

The Codex Xolotl (also known as Códice Xolotl) is a postconquest cartographic Aztec codex, thought to have originated before 1542. The text is primarily graphic, but it is also annotated in Nahuatl. It details the preconquest history of the Basin of Mexico, and Texcoco in particular, from the arrival of the Chichimeca under the ruler Xolotl in the year 5 Flint (1224 C.E.) to the Tepanec War in 1427.

The codex describes Xolotl's and the Chichimecas' entry to an unpopulated basin as peaceful. Although this picture is confirmed by the writings of mestizo historian of Texcoco Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (1568 or 1580–1648), there is other evidence that suggests that the area was inhabited by the Toltecs. Alva Ixtlilxochitl, a direct descendant of Ixtlilxochitl I and Ixtlilxochitl II, based much of his writings on the documents which he most probably obtained from relatives in Texcoco or Teotihuacan. The codex was first brought to Europe in 1840 by the French scientist Joseph Marius Alexis Aubin (fr), and is currently held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.The manuscript consists of six amatl boards measuring 42 cm × 48 cm (17 in × 19 in), with ten pages and three fragments from one or more pages. While it is unknown who did the binding of the manuscript, it is cast like a European book back to back. The Codex Xolotl has been an important source for detailed information on material culture, social, political and cultural changes in the region during the period. It is one of the few still surviving cartographic histories from the Valley of Mexico and one of the earliest of its type.

The Mapa Quinatzin is a 16th-century Nahua pictorial document, consisting of three sheets of amatl paper that depict the history of Acolhuacan.