Day Symbols of the Maya Year

Inconsistencies in hyphenation and spelling have been maintained, along with two typographical errors. The typographical errors are marked with [TN-#] in the text. A complete list of inconsistencies and errors is found at the end of this paper.

The original publication used characters which are not available in the character set used in this version of the text. They have been replaced with the following codes:

[c] open o [=h] h with stroke

DAY SYMBOLS OF THE MAYA YEAR

BY

CYRUS THOMAS

CONTENTS

Page Introductory 205 The first day 207 The second day 215 The third day 221 The fourth day 226 The fifth day 229 The sixth day 231 The seventh day 232 The eighth day 235 The ninth day 237 The tenth day 239 The eleventh day 241 The twelfth day 243 The thirteenth day 245 The fourteenth day 248 The fifteenth day 250 The sixteenth day 252 The seventeenth day 254 The eighteenth day 258 The nineteenth day 259 The twentieth day 262 Appendix--A list of the deities of the days of the month in the Maori calendar 265

ILLUSTRATIONS

Page PLATE LXIV. Copies of glyphs from the codices 208 LXV. Copies of glyphs from the codices 226 LXVI. Copies of glyphs from the codices 242 LXVII. Copies of glyphs from the codices 252 LXVIII. Copies of glyphs from the codices 260 LXIX. Shell bearing Maya glyphs 262

DAY SYMBOLS OF THE MAYA YEAR

BY CYRUS THOMAS

INTRODUCTORY

As the origin and signification of the day and month, names of the Maya calendar, and of the symbols used to represent these time periods, are now being discussed by students of Mexican and Central American paleography, I deem it advisable to present the result of my investigations in this line. The present paper, however, will be limited to the days only, as I have but little to add in regard to the month names or symbols. As the conclusion reached by Drs Seler and Brinton in regard to the order and sequence of the days of the month in the different calendars appears to be satisfactorily established, it will be accepted.

As frequent allusion is made herein to the phoneticism or phonetic value of the written characters or hieroglyphs, it is proper that the writer's position on this point should be clearly understood. He does not claim that the Maya scribes had reached that advanced stage where they could indicate each letter-sound by a glyph or symbol. On the contrary, he thinks a symbol, probably derived in most cases from an older method of picture writing, was selected because the name or word it represented had as its chief phonetic element a certain consonant sound or syllable. If this consonant element were b, the symbol would be used where b was the prominent consonant element of the word to be indicated, no reference, however, to its original signification being necessarily retained. Thus the symbol for cab, "earth," might be used in writing Caban, a day name, or cabil, "honey," because cab is their chief phonetic element.

In a previous work[205-1] I have expressed the opinion that the characters are to a certain extent phonetic--are not true alphabetic signs, but syllabic. And at the same time I expressed the opinion that even this definition did not hold true of all, as some were apparently ideographic, while others were simple abbreviated pictorial representations. In a subsequent paper[205-2] I expressed substantially the same opinion, and gave as my belief that one reason why attempts at decipherment have failed of success is a misconception of the peculiar character of the writing, which peculiarity is found in the fact that, as it exists in the codices and inscriptions, it is in a transition stage from the purely ideographic to the phonetic. I stated also my belief that the writing had not reached the stage when each sound was indicated by a glyph or sign.

This may further be explained by the following illustration: The conventionalized figure of a turtlehead is the symbol for a "turtle," ak, ac, or aac in Maya; and a conventionalized footprint is the symbol for "step" or "road," be, beil, in Maya. These may be brought together to form the word akyab or kayab, which may have no reference to the original signification of the combined symbols. These two glyphs are, in fact, combined to form the symbol for the month Kayab.