I am inclined to see the sign for Mercury in the crouching figure belonging
to pictures 9 and 10, which is drawn upside down and combined with the half
Venus sign (11958 = 104 × 115 - 2).
Hands grasping a hieroglyph (a sign for 20 days?) are represented in
pictures 1, 7, 8 and 10.
The enigmatical numbers, prefixed to the hieroglyphs, occur several times,
thus a 1 with pictures 1 and 10, and a 4 twice with picture 8 and a 6 with
picture 3.
Now let us examine picture 10 somewhat in detail and also the signs
standing above it, since both are of special significance here. This
representation treats of the period of 11,960 days in which the Mercury and
lunar revolutions meet. And this is proved by the ten hieroglyphs, which I
will number as follows:--
1 6
2 7
3 8
4 9
5 10.
I can omit Signs 3 and 8, sun and moon, since they refer to a period of
time only in a general way. Sign 1 seems to me, as I have already stated,
to have reference to the revolutions of Mercury. Then follows sign 2, the
upper part of which is a mat and the lower the Muluc sign. I believe this
sign is intended to denote that the beginning of this period is in a Muluc
year. Indeed, our examination of pages 51-52 showed that it was the year 6
Muluc. The mat (Pop) is very properly the symbol of beginning, since the
first month of the year was likewise called Pop. Sign 7, it seems to me,
indicates that this period should be divided into lunar months (denoted by
Ben-Ik), and, as I have already demonstrated in my examination of page 24,
the length of the period is stated here by Signs 4, 5, 6 and 9, but the dot
before the fifth should be placed before the fourth, as is actually the
case on page 24. Therefore:--
4 = 21
5 = 7200
6 = 4680
9 = 59
-----
11960.
It is perhaps not accidental that the ninth sign is that of the fourteenth
month, which signifies the expiration of the preceding lunar month, for
here the month begins with the first day of the fifteenth month.
Sign 10 is doubtless Xul = end, as it so often is, for example, on pages
61-62 below. But I have not solved the meaning of the two prefixes. The end
would be XII Lamat 16 Yax (13 Ix).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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