An Aztec codex and a team of Japanese scientists..............just what is going on in Rome?

The ancient documents are now being preserved under the DigitaVaticana programme using FITS, the format developed by Nasa to store images, astronomical, and astrophysical data, and until now, only 500 manuscripts and 600 incunabula were available to view on the Vatican Library website.

Pre-Columbian Aztec manuscript, written probably near Puebla (Mexico) at the end of the fifteenth century(Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)

Now, the Vatican has teamed up with Japanese firm NTT Data to digitise a further 3,000 manuscripts by 2018.