The Codex Bodley is an important pictographic manuscript of the Mixtec Group and example of Mixtec historiography. It dates to circa 1500 in a variant of the Mixteca-Puebla style of Codex writing. Its colloquial name comes from the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, where it's been stored since the 17th century. It is also referred to as the "Codex Ñuu Tnoo" with Ñuu Tnoo-Huahi Andehui or Ñūù Tnúu-Ve'e Ándɨu (Modern day Tilantongo Mixtec) being the Mixtec name for an Indigenous settlement in Oaxaca, Mexico also known as Tilantongo (directly from its Nahuatl name), which translates to "Black Town-Temple of Heaven." Tilantongo is the location of the modern town of Santiago Tilantongo.

While the exact date of the codex's creation is difficult to establish, judging from its content and style, it was completed before the 1521 Spanish Conquest of Mexico however likely after the year 1500 due to the Mixtec lord Iya Nacuaa Teyusi Ñaña, translated as Eight Deer Jaguar Claw, being noted in the manuscript as being the dynasty's latest descendant, who is mentioned as the 11th century lord of Tilantogo in other Mixtec codices.

The history of the Codex Bodley before becoming part of the Bodleian Library's collection at the beginning of the 17th century is not known. Due to its description of the dynasty of Ñuu Tnoo (Tilantongo) on the obverse before relating the origin of another dynasty that ruled Tlaxiaco, as well as having many similarities to the Codex Selden, which is known to have come from the area, it's presumed to have come from this region of Oaxaca, but this is impossible to tell definitively. Its possible that it was brought up in legal battles with the descendants of thee Tilantongo dynasty to prove their claim to nobility before being sent off to Seville, and possibly becoming part of the General Archive of the Indies, explaining its presence in Europe. This is made even more plausible due to it being known that a Mixtec individual who changed their name to Don Felipe, after Felipe of Spain, filed numerous lawsuits in an attempt to protect their territorial privileges.

J. Eric Thompson, a British archaeologist and expert on the ancient Mayas, suggested that the manuscript's previous owner was Bishop Jerónimo Osório of Faro, Portugal before it was looted by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex and given to his friend Thomas Bodley in the sixteenth century, where it later became part of the Bodleian Library.

The Bodleian Library holds four other Mesoamerican codices: Codex Laud, Codex Mendoza, Codex Selden and the Selden Roll.

The codex is made of deerskin that is 6.7 meters (ca. 22 feet) long. The animal skin was folded accordion style to form the distinct pages. Each page was then covered with a white base paint coat and then divided with horizontal red bands. The obverse has five bands while the reverse is only divided into four. It has traditionally been numbered based on Lord Kingsborough's facsimile of it in his Antiquities of Mexico. The condition of the original codex has faded over time, with many of the pages missing parts of the pictography. However, Kingsborough's facsimiles appear to have been made before this degradation, with the artist, Agostino Aglio using now faded colors of green and yellow that have, on the original, now faded to ocher or brown. However, this could also be attributed to Agostino's familiarity with color in such works due to his, by then, extensive work transcribing codices.

The manuscript is read from right to left on two sides; the obverse and the reverse. The obverse consists of Pages 1 through 20 while the reverse starts on Page 40 and finishes on Page 21. The obverse ends with a genealogy and names Lord Eight Deer as the last/latest lord of the Tilantongo dynasty at the time of the codex's creation. On the reverse, Page 21 names Lord Eight Grass as being the last king of Tlaxiaco. Eight Grass's name-glyph is at bottom center, above the 9-Deer glyph (photo).

The obverse narrative begins on page 1, Band V, ending on Page 20, Band III. The reverse, however, follows numerous other stories, and as such is far more complex. Here, the upper two bands contain notes for the text while the rest relay the story. The main narrative on the reverse begins with Page 40, Band V, and proceeeds through Band V, VI, and III to Page 34. Band I then is the only one to supply notes. The story then is continued on Page 23, continuing across Bands V-I until Page 28 with no notes. The narrative splits on Page 28, with Bands I and II providing notes for the story while Bands III-V continue the genealogy until Psage 22.