This passage is in some respects closely related to the preceding
Tonalamatl, but in other respects it differs significantly from this and
from what is usual, for the Tonalamatl is divided here into only four
principal divisions of 65 days each, which begin very regularly with the
days VIII Oc, VIII Men, VIII Ahau and VIII Chicchan. There are neither
subdivisions nor the usual pictures belonging to them. But on the other
hand each of the longer periods of time written down here have eight
hieroglyphs for each section in the usual order.
B's sign occupies the places 6, 4, 4 and 4; from this it follows that here
too he forms the principal subject.
Here, as in the preceding Tonalamatl, the first place in each group
contains the sign denoting beginning, while the eighth sign is invariably
the head without an underjaw, which seems to me to refer to _fasting_, as
if a fast-day fell at the end of every 65 days.
In the fifth place we see in succession the four animals, which in the
preceding Tonalamatl are not included in the groups of hieroglyphs. Here
they stand in the order of mammal, bird, amphibian and fish, but the bird
in the second group is replaced by the sign which usually occurs with the
dog (lightning-beast).
The signs in the second place are those of the cardinal points, and they
are given in the same order as in the preceding Tonalamatl, _i.e._, east,
north, west and south, so that they do not belong to the same animals as
they do there.
The third signs are the cardinal points again, but in the abbreviated form
discovered first by Schellhas, and in a different order:--west, north, east
and south, and always joined to the head of C around which everything
revolves as around the polar star. The Kan sign with different accompanying
signs occupies the seventh place in the first group, and the sixth in the
other three.
Four signs still remain:--the fourth of the first group I am inclined to
consider the abbreviated sign for the sun; the seventh of the second, rain
with the sign for the west as a prefix; the seventh of the third, Caban,
ground, with the sign for the east as a prefix; the seventh of the fourth
is Kan with the Yax sign above it, probably denoting the vegetable kingdom.
Pages 31b--35b.
This entire passage is devoted to a single Tonalamatl, which is divided and
written out in an unusual manner. Like the preceding it is divided into
four parts of 65 days each, but the remarkable thing about it is that these
divisions of 65 days are each subdivided into two periods of 46 and 19
days, and the 46 days again into eight unequal parts, which are exactly the
same each time, while the 19 days run their course without further
subdivision. On pages 33, 34 and 35 this 19 is always on the left at the
bottom, on page 32 it is wanting, probably because it was self-evident and
there was no suitable place for it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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