A page from the facsimile of the Codex Mendoza
The Codex Mendoza is an Aztec codex, created about twenty years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. It was made for the Emperor Charles V, but was stolen en route to Spain by French pirates and brought to France.
There it came into the possession of André Thévet, cosmographer to King Henry II of France. It was later bought by the Englishman Richard Hakluyt for 20 French crowns.
Some time after 1616 it was passed to Samuel Purchase, then to his son, and then to John Selden. The codex was finally deposited into the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in 1659, 5 years after Selden's death, where it remained in obscurity until 1831, when it was rediscovered by Viscount Kingsborough and brought to the attention of scholars.

The Codex contains three sections, a history of the Aztec people from 1325 through 1521, a list of the towns conquered by the Triple Alliance and the tributes paid by each and a pictorial depiction of the daily life of the Aztecs.
The image above is from the second section and shows warrior costumes and textiles as tribute. The focus of the image is on a shield.
The four volume facsimile Codex is a rare book itself and worth about $700.

The image above was taken for this weeks Totally Informal Transglobal "Thursday" Challenge: "Paper". Check out other images here