Francisco Ximénez

Francisco Ximénez (1666–c. 1729) was a Spanish Dominican priest and linguist who worked among the K'iche' Maya of Guatemala. He studied Maya languages and wrote grammars and a history of the Dominican province of Chiapas and Guatemala.

While parish priest at Chichicastenango in the early 1700s, he copied a K'iche' text written in Latin letters in the 16th century, apparently to preserve an older hieroglyphic book, and set beside it a Spanish translation. This is the Popol Vuh, the K'iche' account of creation, of the Hero Twins and their contest with the lords of Xibalba, and of the K'iche' lineages. The 16th-century original is lost, so his copy is the only surviving source.

The manuscript passed through the hands of the French scholar Brasseur de Bourbourg and others before the collector Edward E. Ayer bought it in 1887. It has been at the Newberry Library in Chicago since 1912.