Codex

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The codex (pl.: codices ) was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format, of a stack of pages bound at one edge. However, the term codex is usually reserved for older manuscript books, which mostly used sheets of vellum, parchment, or papyrus, rather than paper. By convention, the term is also used for any Aztec codex (although the earlier examples do not actually use the codex format), Maya codices and other pre-Columbian American manuscripts. Library practices have led to many European manuscripts having "codex" as part of their usual name, as with the Codex Gigas, while most do not. At least in the Western world, the main predecessor to the paged codex format for a long document was the continuous scroll (also of vellum, parchment or papyrus), which was the dominant form of document in the ancient world. Some codices are continuously folded like a concertina, in particular the Maya codices and Aztec codices,...

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