Popol Vuh

The Popol Vuh ("K'iche" for "Council Book" or "Book of the Community"; "Popol Wu'uj" in modern spelling) is a book written in the Classical Quiché language. It contains mythological stories and a genealogy of the rulers of the Post-Classic Quiché Maya kingdom of highland Guatemala.
The book contains a creation myth followed by mythological stories of two Hero Twins: Hunahpu (Modern K'iche': "Junajpu") and Xbalanque (Modern K'iche': "Xb‘alanke"). The second part of the book deals with details of the foundation and history of the Quiché kingdom.
The book is written in the Latin alphabet, but it is thought to have been based on an original Maya codex. The original manuscript which was written around 1550 has been lost, but a copy of another handwritten copy in the early 18th century exists today in Chicago.
The significance of the book is enormous since it is one of a small number of early Mesoamerican mythological texts — it is often considered the single most important piece of Mesoamerican literature.
Contents.
Summary.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Creation Myth.
The book begins with the creation myth of the K'ichee' Maya, which credits the creation of humans to the three water-dwelling feathered serpents:
and to the three other deities, collectively called "Heart of heaven":
who together attempted to create human beings to keep him company.
Their first attempts proved unsuccessful. They attempted to make man of mud, but man could neither move nor speak. After destroying the mud men, they tried again by creating wooden creatures that could speak but had no soul or blood and quickly forgot him. Angered over the flaws in his creation, they destroyed them by tearing them apart. In their final attempt, the “True People” were constructed with maize. The following is an excerpt of this myth:
Today.
The Popol Vuh continues to be an important part in the belief system of many Quiché.
Excerpt.
Here are the opening lines of the book, in modernized spelling and punctuation (from Sam Colop's edition):
Here is the opening of the creation story: