Was the Beginning Day of the Maya Month Numbered Zero (or Twenty) or One?Bowditch, Charles P. (Charles Pickering)
History
Was the Beginning Day of the Maya Month Numbered Zero (or Twenty) or One?
Bowditch, Charles P. (Charles Pickering)
Maya calendar
The chief evidence in favor of giving the 0 or 20 glyph the meaning of
20 is, that this glyph is often drawn with a hand stretching across its
lower part, especially when the main part of the glyph is a face. Now
the face glyphs which represent the cycle of 144,000 days and the katun
of 7,200 days are very similar, except that the cycle glyph has also a
hand across its lower part, and the cycle is equal to 20 katuns; but
this evidence is somewhat weak, since it is clear that even if the 0
or 20 glyph should be decided to mean 20, in all calculations it is to
be treated as 0, as is proved by many of the inscriptions of Palenque,
Piedras Negras, Copan, and elsewhere.
On the whole, therefore, I think the weight of evidence is in favor of
the hypothesis that the Mayas called the beginning days of their month
Day 0 and numbered the days of their month from 0 to 19.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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