The monumental nine-volume publication entitled Antiquities of Mexico was produced by Edward King, Viscount Kingsborough, from 1831.
This monumental volume, bound in red morocco with watered silk endpapers by Hering, is the product of a lifetime’s interest in the history of Mexico. After seeing the 16th-century Codex Mendoza, a manuscript of the history of the Aztec rulers and their conquests, Lord Kingsborough decided to devote his life to studying Mexico, encouraged by the great collector of manuscripts, Sir Thomas Phillipps.
The work is spread over nine volumes of text and plates.Through its fine illustrations, Kingsborough's publication gave scholars access to Mesoamerican manuscripts in European collections. Given its size and extent, it is hardly surprising that this took a lifetime to complete, and financially crippled Kingsborough.

The page pictured reproduces the title page of the early sixteenth-century Codex Mendoza, which has been in the collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, since 1659. It shows the founding of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital from 1325 to 1521, remains of which lie beneath modern Mexico City. The city's site was chosen in fulfilment of a prophecy that it would be located where an eagle (the Crested Caracara) was seen perching on a cactus.