The codex derives its name from Zelia Nuttall, who first published it in 1902, and Baroness Zouche, its donor.

The codex folds together like a screen and is vividly painted on both sides,[3] and the condition of the document is by and large excellent.

It is one of three codices that record the genealogies, alliances and conquests of several 11th and 12th century rulers of a small Mixtec city-state in highland Oaxaca, the Tilantongo kingdom, especially under the leadership of the warrior Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw[4] (who died in the early twelfth century at the age of fifty-two).

It was first identified at the Monastery of San Marco, Florence, in 1854 and was sold in 1859 to John Temple Leader who sent it to his friend Robert Curzon, 14th Baron Zouche.

A facsimile was published while it was in the collection of Baron Zouche by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard in 1902, with an introduction by Zelia Nuttall (1857–1933).