In the 1880s, Leon de Rosny, an ethnologist, realised that the two pieces belonged together, and helped combine them into a single text.

[6] Its content mainly consists of almanacs and horoscopes based on the Mayapan calendar used to help Maya priests in the performance of their ceremonies and divinatory rituals.

Closer analysis of glyphic elements suggests that a number of scribes were involved in its production, perhaps as many as eight or nine, who produced consecutive sections of the manuscript.

[11] The images in the Madrid Codex depict rituals such as human sacrifice and invoking rainfall, as well as everyday activities such as beekeeping, hunting, warfare, and weaving.

[6] Other images show deities smoking sikar (see tables 25, 26, and 34 of the Codex), similar to modern cigars made of tobacco leaves.

[13] According to the codex content it was created in the northwestern part of Yucatán since the document presents the same year-bearers of the Mayapán calendar (K'an, Muluk, Ix and Kawak) and the same symbology used in the region as well as the same New Year rituals and cemonies that were recorded and described by Bishop Diego de Landa in 1566 performed by the Maya of northwestern Yucatán.

[15] Other scholars have expressed a differing opinion, noting that the codex is similar in style to murals found at Chichen Itza, Mayapan, and sites on the east coast such as Santa Rita, Tankah, and Tulum.

[10] Two paper fragments incorporated into the front and last pages of the codex contain Spanish writing, which led Thompson to early suggest that a Spanish priest acquired the document at Tayasal in Petén meaning that the codex was not Pre-Columbian but instead it was a colonial writing,[16] this theory has been debunked and discarded due to the fact that the pages were pasted years later after the creation of the codex and they don't have any actual proof or context related to the site but it led to other hypothesis since the content of the text could have been a Crusade Bull, this would indicate that the codex was most likely acquired by Spanish priests as part of the Maya codices confiscated in 1607 by the commissioner of the Holy Crusade in Yucatan, Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar, in Chancenote, eastern Yucatan, where in addition to clay figures, he also recorded that two codices were confiscated.