Edward King, Viscount Kingsborough was an Irish antiquarian who sought to prove that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were a Lost Tribe of Israel. His principal contribution was in making available facsimiles of ancient documents and some of the earliest explorers' reports on Pre-Columbian ruins and Maya civilization. The eldest son of George King, 3rd Earl of Kingston, Lord Kingsborough represented Cork County in parliament between 1818 and 1826. In 1831, Lord Kingsborough published the first volume of Antiquities of Mexico, a collection of copies of various Mesoamerican codices, including the first complete publication of the Dresden Codex. The exorbitant cost of the reproductions, which were often hand-painted, landed him in debtors' prison. These lavish publications represented some of the earliest published documentation of the ancient cultures of Mesoamerica, inspiring further exploration and research by John Lloyd Stephens and Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg in the early 19th century. They were the product of early theories about non-indigenous origins for Native American civilizations that are also represented in the Book of Mormon (1830) and myths about mound builders of Old World ancestry in North America. Lord Kingsborough was imprisoned for debt and died in prison of typhus on 27 February 1837, two years before he would have inherited his father's title. The last two volumes of Antiquities of Mexico were published posthumously.