DOCSLIB.ORG

Chich'en Itza, the Dresden Codex Venus Table And

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Chich'en Itza, the Dresden Codex Venus Table And Discovering Discovery: Chich’en Itza, the Dresden Codex Venus Table and 10th Century Mayan Astronomical Innovation Gerardo Aldana y V. University of California, Santa Barbara Abstract: After centuries of scant attention and even- A new reading of Dresden Codex Page 24, the “Pre- tual repose in the Dresden Library in Ger- face” to the Venus Table, is presented, demonstrating a many, a Postclassic manuscript written in much-improved overall coherence. This reading of hie- Mayan hieroglyphs was brought to the at- roglyphic text, mathematical intervals, and calendric tention of modern scholars during the data specifically identifies the Mayan Long Count dates of the Venus Table’s historical correction. The resulting nineteenth century. Six pages of this man- Long Count placement of the manuscript’s Venus Table uscript, the “Dresden Codex,” have been suggests that it was an indigenous astronomical dis- recognized as relating to the planet Venus covery made at Chich’en Itza, possibly under the patro- since Ernst Förstemann first began work- nage of K’ak’ U Pakal K’awiil — one of the most pro- ing through them in the 1880s. minent historical figures in the inscriptions of the city Förstemann suggested that across these during its “epigraphic florescence.” Revealing the logic pages, a table of dates1 based on multiples underlying the construction of the page, the revised rea- of 584 days were used to track the observ- ding suggests a slightly less-accurate approximation to able period of Venus. Förstemann at- Venus’s synodic period than the traditional interpreta- tion allows, but introduces a justification for the graphi- tempted a translation of the pages (almost cal layout of Page 24 that is more straightforward than a century before the decipherment of the traditional interpretations. script itself) by inferring the meaning from the calendric-astronomical patterns he re- Keywords: Maya, Astronomy, Calendars, covered. Venus, Indigenous Knowledge [W]e find that the [Yucatec scribe] de- Introduction sires to say this: 1 Dates in the Maya Calendar are made up of tropical year. Each of 18 months has 20 days; Long Count and Calendar Round compo- one final “month” is of only 5 days. The month nents. The Long Count is a tally of days con- names are Pohp, Wo, Sip, Sots’, Tsek, Xul, Yaxk’in, ceptually equivalent to the Julian Day Number. Mol, Ch’en, Yax, Sak, Keh, Mak, K’ank’in, Muwan, The differences are only that the Long Count Pax, K’ayab, Kumk’u, Wayeb. A full date would is a modified vigesimal count (base-20) and the be written, for example, as bolon pih bolon wini- “zero date” is different in each case. The Cal- khaab ka haab kan winik waxak k’in ho lamat hun mol endar Round is a combination of the 260 Day and transcribed by modern scholars as Count and the 365 Day Count. The 260 Day 9.9.2.4.8 5 Lamat 1 Mol. Within hieroglyphic Count is a combination of 13 numbers and 20 texts, dates (full or partial) are separated by Day Signs, each advancing on a daily basis. time intervals or “distance numbers” given in The Day Signs are Imix, Ik’, Ak’bal, K’an, Long Count format. A time interval of 4.8 rep- Chikchan, Kimi, Manik, Lamat, Muluk, Ok, Chuwen, resents 88 days. Three hundred sixty-five days Eb, Ben, Ix, Men, Kib, Kaban, Etz’nab, Kawak, would be represented 1.0.5 in Long Count no- Ajaw. The 365 Day Count approximates the tation. Journal of Astronomy in Culture 1(1), 2016, pp. 57-76 Copyright © International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture 58 I am here treating especially the peri- would have accumulated, and that they de- ods consisting of five successive Venus veloped a means for correcting their Table years, bringing them into harmony accordingly over very long spans of time. with the solar year and the [260 Day His interpretation was consolidated and Count]2. … [E]ach individual Venus extended by Eric Thompson at mid-cen- year [is] divided into four unequal tury, who argued that Postclassic Mayan parts, which appertain to the east, astronomers had access to an ephemeris north, west, and south and are ruled for Venus accurate to “within one day in by certain deities, which I can mention six thousand years” (1978:63). only in part, owing to lack of space. This, I suggest, is where the historiog- Lastly, I would add that each of the raphy of the Dresden Codex Venus Table five Venus years of a period is domi- takes an interesting turn. Without an abil- nated as a whole by a deity, and the ity to read the hieroglyphic text in the Ta- signs of these I give here (1894:443). ble, scholars were left at mid-century to make an argument for the Venus ephem- Förstemann’s work of over a century ago eris mainly through its purported accuracy goes a long way toward capturing the un- in predicting observable phenomena. This derstanding still current in the contempo- trope then dominated the academic con- rary literature (Aveni 2001; Bricker and sideration of the Venus Table: the better Bricker 2007; Lounsbury 1983). the accuracy it could attribute to the Ta- In the 1920s John Teeple, a chemical ble, the stronger the modern interpretation engineer turned Mayan calendar enthusi- was considered to be (Thompson 1978; ast, followed Förstemann and Eduard Lounsbury 1983, 1992; Bricker and Seler’s interpretive work to focus on the Bricker 2007). mathematical subtlety of the Venus Table. In particular, two forms of accuracy Teeple found that a sequence of four ‘un- have controlled this discourse. The first conventional’ time intervals on Page 243 of has to do with the placement of one of the the manuscript—which confounded Calendar Round dates recorded in the Ve- Förstemann (1894)— actually served as nus pages with respect to a historically re- “corrected” multiples of the 584-day ca- constructed first morning visibility of Ve- lendric period of Venus (Thompson nus (fmv).4 The second concerns how well 1978:224). These intervals suggested that the table could be re-cycled to minimize Mayan astronomers kept track of the dif- the accrued error between prediction and ference between their calendric progres- observation. In 1983, Floyd Lounsbury sion based on a Venus Round of 584 days graphically depicted his and Thompson’s and the 583.9214-day synodic period of approaches to both measures as shown in Venus. Teeple argued that these astrono- Figure 1. mers quantified the amount of error that 2 Förstemann here used the term tonalamatl, 4 Scholars in the past turned to the Tuckerman which is the Nahuatl name for the 260 Day Tables to look up idealized observations for the Count. See footnote 1. Mayan area (Lounsbury 1983:5); now it is com- 3 The apparent non-sequentiality of the Pref- mon for archaeoastronomers to utilize software ace and the Table is accidental only. The man- such as EZCosmos (Freidel, Schele, and Parker uscript had fragmented, and it was numbered 1993) or Planet’s Visibility (Bricker and Bricker out of order. In its original form, the Preface 2007:116). Either way, a Calendar Correlation immediately preceded the Table. is necessary for these studies. See footnote 5. Aldana, G. 59 Figure 1. Reconstruction of Lounsbury’s “mean error” graph of Venus observations against hypothetical Dresden Codex predictions. Lounsbury followed Thompson’s ap- work, modifying it slightly by changing the proach to matching the long-term correc- Calendar Correlation5 by two days and ar- tion of the table, but changed the starting guing that the ephemeris was more strictly point; both models synchronize at a warning table. This move slightly altered 10.10.11.12.0 1 Ajaw 18 K’ayab, which Bricker and Bricker’s inherited notion of they assigned to October 25, 1038 A.D. accuracy since now they want a table that Lounsbury engaged the first aspect of the strictly anticipates fmv; the constraint, of Venus Table’s ‘accuracy’ by noting that his course, is that it cannot come so early that reconstruction placed the 1 Ajaw 18 the prediction overlaps with last evening K’ayab of 10.5.6.4.0 exactly on a (histori- visibility—a rather small range of possibil- cally reconstructed) first morning visibility ity over the long run, given that inferior of Venus (mean error of ‘0’). He claimed conjunction varies and can be as short as that this fmv corresponded to a conjunc- half a day. tion of Venus and Mars—in his view, a Nonetheless, the reconstructions by particularly noteworthy event (Lounsbury these scholars ascribe an impressive accu- 1983:12). racy to Mayan Venusian astronomy and in Harvey Bricker and Victoria Bricker its fundamentals create an interpretation (2007) agreed with most of Lounsbury’s 5 The Calendar Correlation is an arithmetic GMT = JDN. The GMT includes “variants,” constant used to link the Maya Long Count to however, that compensate for the prioritization the Julian Day Number. (See footnote 1) The of different data sets by the scholars utilizing it GMT is the most commonly used Correlation (cf. Aldana 2010, 2015). Constant, where GMT = 584,283 and LC + JAC, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2016 60 that has been universally accepted by Ma- also resolve the complications of the tradi- yanists since the early twentieth century tional model with respect to the anchor (Morley 1975; Thompson 1972; Sharer and the Correction Intervals. 2006; Coe 1988). There are, however, In this essay, we incorporate a ritual complications with it. The first, as we shall utility and prioritize the internal logic of see, is that the method they all propose for the table for the interpretation of how it in- correcting the Table does not follow teracts with observable Venus phenomena straightforwardly from the information ac- and the Venus Table of dates on Pages 46- tually recorded in the Preface.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Solution of the Mayan Calendar Enigma Thomas Chanier
    Solution of the Mayan Calendar Enigma Thomas Chanier To cite this version: Thomas Chanier. Solution of the Mayan Calendar Enigma. 2016. hal-01254966v6 HAL Id: hal-01254966 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01254966v6 Preprint submitted on 29 Nov 2016 (v6), last revised 13 Nov 2018 (v7) HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. SOLUTION OF THE MAYAN CALENDAR ENIGMA Thomas Chanier∗ Independent researcher, Coralville, Iowa 52241, USA The Mayan arithmetical model of astronomy is described. The astronomical origin of the Mayan Calendar (the 260-day Tzolk'in, the 365-day Haab', the 3276-day Kawil-direction-color cycle and the 1872000-day Long Count Calendar) is demonstrated and the position of the Calendar Round at the mythical date of creation 13(0).0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 8 Cumku is calculated. The results are expressed as a function of the Xultun numbers, four enigmatic Long Count numbers deciphered in the Maya ruins of Xultun, dating from the IX century CE. (Saturno 2012) Evidence shows that this model was used in the Maya Classic period (200 to 900 CE) to determine the Palenque lunar equation.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Origin of the Different Mayan Calendars Thomas Chanier
    On the origin of the different Mayan Calendars Thomas Chanier To cite this version: Thomas Chanier. On the origin of the different Mayan Calendars. 2014. hal-01018037v1 HAL Id: hal-01018037 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01018037v1 Submitted on 3 Jul 2014 (v1), last revised 14 Jan 2015 (v3) HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. On the origin of the different Mayan Calendars T. Chanier∗1 1 Department of Physics, University of Namur, rue de Bruxelles 61, B-5000 Namur, Belgium The Maya were known for their astronomical proficiency. Whereas Mayan mathematics were based on a vigesimal system, they used a different base when dealing with long periods of time, the Long Count Calendar (LCC), composed of different Long Count Periods: the Tun of 360 days, the Katun of 7200 days and the Baktun of 144000 days. There were three other calendars used in addition to the LCC: a civil year Haab’ of 365 days, a religious year Tzolk’in of 260 days and a 3276- day cycle (combination of the 819-day Kawil cycle and 4 colors-directions). Based on astronomical arguments, we propose here an explanation of the origin of the LCC, the Tzolk’in and the 3276-day cycle.
    [Show full text]
  • Arxiv:1601.03132V7 [Math.HO] 15 Nov 2018 [2]
    Solution of the Mayan Calendar Enigma Thomas Chanier1∗ 1Independent researcher, 1025 12th avenue, Coralville, Iowa 52241, USA The Mayan calendar is proposed to derive from an arithmetical model of naked-eye astronomy. The Palenque and Copan lunar equations, used during the Maya Classic period (200 to 900 AD) are solution of the model and the results are expressed as a function of the Xultun numbers, four enigmatic Long Count numbers deciphered in the Maya ruins of Xultun, dating from the IX century AD, providing strong arguments in favor of the use of the model by the Maya. The different Mayan Calendar cycles can be derived from this model and the position of the Calendar Round at the mythical date of creation 13(0).0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 8 Cumku is calculated. This study shows the high proficiency of Mayan mathematics as applied to astronomy and timekeeping for divinatory purposes.a I. INTRODUCTION In the Calendar Round, a date is represented by αXβY with the religious month 1 ≤ α ≤ 13, X one of the 20 Mayan priests-astronomers were known for their astro- religious days, the civil day 0 ≤ β ≤ 19, and Y one of the nomical and mathematical proficiency, as demonstrated 18 civil months, 0 ≤ β ≤ 4 for the Uayeb. Fig. 1 shows a in the Dresden Codex, a XIV century AD bark-paper contemporary representation of the Calendar Round as book containing accurate astronomical almanacs aiming a set of three interlocking wheels: the Tzolk'in, formed to correlate ritual practices with astronomical observa- by a 13-month and a 20-day wheels and the Haab'.
    [Show full text]
  • The Mayan Gods: an Explanation from the Structures of Thought
    Journal of Historical Archaeology & Anthropological Sciences Review Article Open Access The Mayan gods: an explanation from the structures of thought Abstract Volume 3 Issue 1 - 2018 This article explains the existence of the Classic and Post-classic Mayan gods through Laura Ibarra García the cognitive structure through which the Maya perceived and interpreted their world. Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico This structure is none other than that built by every member of the human species during its early ontogenesis to interact with the outer world: the structure of action. Correspondence: Laura Ibarra García, Centro Universitario When this scheme is applied to the world’s interpretation, the phenomena in it and de Ciencias Sociales, Mexico, Tel 523336404456, the world as a whole appears as manifestations of a force that lies behind or within Email [email protected] all of them and which are perceived similarly to human subjects. This scheme, which finds application in the Mayan worldview, helps to understand the personality and Received: August 30, 2017 | Published: February 09, 2018 character of figures such as the solar god, the rain god, the sky god, the jaguar god and the gods of Venus. The application of the cognitive schema as driving logic also helps to understand the Maya established relationships between some animals, such as the jaguar and the rattlesnake and the highest deities. The study is part of the pioneering work that seeks to integrate the study of cognition development throughout history to the understanding of the historical and cultural manifestations of our country, especially of the Pre-Hispanic cultures.
    [Show full text]
  • Symbols, Glyphs, and Divinatory Almanacs for Diseases in the Maya Dresden and Madrid Codices
    SYMBOLS, GLYPHS, AND DIVINATORY ALMANACS FOR DISEASES IN THE MAYA DRESDEN AND MADRID CODICES J. ERIC S. THOMPSON O SATISFACTORY explanation, to the earth sign, as for example, in the glyph Caban. N best of my knowledge, has been offered of Ixchel was the patroness of childbirth, sexual the scenes on pages 16-20 of the Maya Dresden relations, disease, the earth and its crops, water, codex and the parallel passages on pages 93-95 and the art of weaving. It is, therefore, logical of Codex Madrid which depict a goddess or to find her as patron in almanacs which sup­ woman in association with various birds, ani­ posedly deal with disease. mals, and gods. She carries them on her head The main reasons for believing that Codex or shoulders or on a pack on her back sup­ Dresden originated in northern Yucatan are ported by a strap across her chest. these: The presence of Initial Series dating and · Before attempting to solve the problem of the elaborate astronomical presentation strongly the subject matter, I will make 3 postulates, for argue in favor of a lowland origin. The stand­ all of which, I believe, there is ample support. ard form of Calendar Round rules out Cam­ The first is that these 2 codices deal purely peche and the Puuc, and I suspect, but cannot with divinatory matters; the second is that the prove, that this also eliminates the Chontal woman depicted in these passages is Ixchel, region after the close of the Classic period. the moon goddess, whose functions as patroness The rather marked Mexican influences in the of childbirth, procreation, disease, weaving, and codex argue against an origin in the center and the growing crops I have previously defined the southeastern lowlands, regions which, in (Thompson 1939; 1950: 230-1); the third is any case, were backward in Postclassic times.
    [Show full text]
  • A Mathematical Journey Through the Land of the Maya Philip Scalisi Bridgewater State College, [email protected]
    Bridgewater Review Volume 24 | Issue 2 Article 6 Dec-2005 A Mathematical Journey through the Land of the Maya Philip Scalisi Bridgewater State College, [email protected] Paul Fairbanks Bridgewater State College, [email protected] Recommended Citation Scalisi, Philip and Fairbanks, Paul (2005). A Mathematical Journey through the Land of the Maya. Bridgewater Review, 24(2), 8-13. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol24/iss2/6 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. A Mathematical Journey Several of us were fortunate to enter the interior of El The next day our group journeyed to Dzibilchaltún, Castillo as a smaller pyramid exists inside it! After a city noted for having one of the longest histories of through the ascending 62 narrow slippery stairs in a steamy, dark unbroken occupation of any Mayan site, from c. 500 and dank atmosphere, we came upon the chamber of B.C. to c. 1500 A.D. The most important structure here Land of the Maya the Chac-mool, a reclining figure with its head looking is the Temple of the Seven Dolls, named after seven by Philip Scalisi and Paul Fairbanks sideways. Its posture represents a figure descending into crudely modeled figurines found in it. At dawn on the the underworld. Beyond this statue is the throne of the spring and autumn equinoxes, the rising sun beams (all photographs by Philip Scalisi) AIRBANKS Red Jaguar, a painted altar inlaid with jade, bone, and directly though the east and west doors of the Temple mirrors.
    [Show full text]
  • Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of The
    SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY. AIDS TO THE STUDY THE MAYA CODICES. PROF. CYRUS THOMAS. CONTENTS. Introduction Chap. I. The numerals in the Dresden Codex . II. Conclusions III. Tlie writing Signifi, tlie characters. Synil... u:,U&C Synil... DisCUn: to iihonetic features of the characters- , . ILLUSTRATIONS. Fig. 359. Line of day and ninneral syml)ols from Plates 36c and 37c, Dresden Codex 373 360. Line of day and numeral characters from Plates 33-39, Dresden Codex 376 361. Unusual symbol for Al;l)al from Plate 8 of the Dresden Codex .... 384 362. Copy of Plate r,(i, li)-, "lex 397 363. Copy of Plate.'.l. Ih, 364. Copy of Plate .-.-.'. in. 365. Copy of Plate r,;i. 1 ii 366. Copy of Plate .-.l. Hn 367. Copy of Plate 5."i, Dresden Codex 310 368. Copy of Plate 56, Dresden Codex 311 369. Copy of Plate 57, Dresden Codex 313 370. Copy of Plate 58, Dresden Codex 313 371. Specimens of ornamental loops from page 73, Dresden Codex... 337 372. Numeral character from the lower division of Plate XV, Manuscript Troano 343 .'. 373. Turtle from the Cortesian Codex, Plate 17 . 348 374. Jar from the Cortesian Codex, Plate 27 349 375. Worm and plant from Manuscript Troano, Plate XXIX 351 376. Figure of a woman from the Dresden Codex : 351 377. Copy of middle and lower divisions of Plate XIX, Manuscript Troano 352 378. Copy of lower division of Plate 65, Dresden Codex 353 379. The moo or ara from Plate 16, Dresden Codex 355 380. The god Ekchuah, after the Ti-oano and Cortesian Codices 358 381.
    [Show full text]
  • The Role of Rain in Postclassic Maya Religious Belief
    University of Central Florida STARS HIM 1990-2015 2011 The role of rain in postclassic Maya religious belief Lillie U. Dao University of Central Florida Part of the Anthropology Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses1990-2015 University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIM 1990-2015 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Recommended Citation Dao, Lillie U., "The role of rain in postclassic Maya religious belief" (2011). HIM 1990-2015. 1216. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses1990-2015/1216 THE ROLE OF RAIN IN POSTCLASSIC MAYA RELIGIOUS BELIEF by LILLIE U. DAO A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Honors in the Major Program in Anthropology in the College of Sciences and in The Burnett Honors College at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Fall Term 2011 Thesis Chair: Dr. Sarah Barber ABSTRACT The concept of religion and its practice within ancient societies across the world is a subject that has fascinated scientists for centuries. The pre-Columbian Maya codices, first-hand Postclassic hieroglyphic documents, have been examined by hundreds of anthropologists. Analysis of these books has led scientist to hypothesize that these manuscripts were vitally connected to the Maya Postclassic belief system. Understanding the central focus of a civilization’s religion and how, why and under what circumstances the religion is practiced truly distinguishes them as a culture.
    [Show full text]
  • Mayan Astronomy
    Mayan Astronomy In the Mesoamerican culture, the practice of astronomy was extremely important. To the Maya of Mesoamerica, this ancient science reflected order in the universe and the gods' place in it. This order reflected an inherent harmony present in their general religious view of the universe. To the Mayans, capturing the essence of time was of the utmost importance. In their cosmology, space and time were inevitably intertwined, as is evidenced by their complex calendar system that combines spatial attributes of the universe, such as animals and plants, with temporal movements of astronomical objects (such as eclipses and constellations). Although the Mayans never invented water clocks or other specific time-keeping devices, they used the sky as a method of measuring the passage of time. Although the Maya appreciated the sky as a whole and its infinite dimensions, they were particularly interested in certain specific astronomical objects. The sun, the moon, Venus, and specific star clusters and constellations were most important. These objects were given the most attention by the priest-astronomers, who spent generations finding the precise paths of these objects across the sky and through the seasons. The most important object in the sky is the sun, which is universally recognized as the prime life-giver on Earth. Tonatiuh, a red eagle with a large and all-seeing eye, was the god associated with the sun. Because of the tilt of the Earth's axis, the sun appears at different positions in the sky depending on the time of year. This tilt is what produces the seasons experienced on Earth.
    [Show full text]
  • The Mayan Long Count Calendar
    The Mayan Long Count Calendar Thomas Chanier∗1 1 Universit´ede Bretagne Occidentale, 6 avenue Victor le Gorgeu, F-29285 Brest Cedex, France The Mayan Codices, bark-paper books from the Late Postclassic period (1300 to 1521 CE) contain many astronomical tables correlated to ritual cycles, evidence of the achievement of Mayan naked- eye astronomy and mathematics in connection to religion. In this study, a calendar supernumber is calculated by computing the least common multiple of 8 canonical astronomical periods. The three major calendar cycles, the Calendar Round, the Kawil and the Long Count Calendar are shown to derive from this supernumber. The 360-day Tun, the 365-day civil year Haab' and the 3276-day Kawil-direction-color cycle are determined from the prime factorization of the 8 canonical astronomical input parameters. The 260-day religious year Tzolk'in and the Long Count Periods (the 360-day Tun, the 7200-day Katun and the 144000-day Baktun) result from arithmetical calculations on the calendar supernumber. My calculations explain certain aspect of the Mayan Calendar notably the existence of the Maya Epoch, a cycle corresponding to 5 Maya Eras of 13 Baktun. Modular arithmetic considerations on the calendar supernumber give the position of the Calendar Rounds at the Mayan origin of time, the Long Count Calendar date 0.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 8 Cumku. Various long count numbers identified on Mayan Codices and monuments are explained by my approach. In particular, the results provide the meaning of the Xultun numbers, four enigmatic long count numbers deciphered in 2012 by Saturno et al.
    [Show full text]
  • Patterns in the Dresden Codex CARA G
    Patterns in the Dresden Codex CARA G. TREMAIN University of Calgary A frequently referenced yet poorly understood deity, Goddess I has suffered from a long tradition of mis- identification. Much confusion and disagreement over this goddess persists in the literature but an analysis of her appearance and associated texts allows for some improved understanding. This article demonstrates that naming patterns within the Dresden Codex can be applied to eroded or absent texts to aid in the correct identification of this female deity. More than that, these newly-identified structures can also aid in the advance- ment of ancient Maya codex studies. Early Studies of Goddess I The first systematic study of the deities in the codices was made by Paul Schelhas in 1904. He classified each deity using a letter designation, and his system was later adopted by other scholars. He recognized two god- desses, whom he labeled Goddess I and Goddess O. He named Goddess I “the water goddess” and described her as an aged female with clawed feet and a brown body wearing a serpent headdress and commonly de- picted pouring water from a jar (Schelhas 1967:31). He expressed uncertainty about her name glyph but paired it with what was later discovered to be one of the name glyphs associated with a youthful goddess (though he himself did not actually identify a youthful goddess in his studies). Goddess O was identified as “a Goddess with the features of an old woman” and her name glyph was recognised to have “wrinkles of age around the eye” (Schelhas 1967:38).
    [Show full text]
  • Ancient Maya Documents Concerning the Movements of Mars
    Ancient Maya documents concerning the movements of Mars Harvey M. Bricker*†, Anthony F. Aveni‡, and Victoria R. Bricker* *Department of Anthropology, Tulane University, 1021 Audubon Street, New Orleans, LA 70118; and ‡Department of Physics and Astronomy, Colgate University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346 Contributed by Victoria R. Bricker, December 11, 2000 A large part of the pre-Columbian Maya book known as the and the very restricted range of the tzolkin to which heliacal rise Dresden Codex is concerned with an exploration of commensurate events were limited during the relevant centuries (7). The 3 Lamat relationships among celestial cycles and their relationship to other, base date of the table leads to an entry date 78 days later, in June nonastronomical cycles of cultural interest. As has long been A.D. 818, within a period of Martian retrograde motion, just before known, pages 43b–45b of the Codex are concerned with the opposition. The iconography of the table—a mythical animal with synodic cycle of Mars. New work reported here with another part an everted snout, the so-called Mars beast, that dangles from a of the Codex, a complex table on pages 69–74, reveals a concern celestial band—may refer to Mars dropping well below the ecliptic on the part of the ancient Maya astronomers with the sidereal during this retrograde loop. The retrograde period of A.D. 818 motion of Mars as well as with its synodic cycle. Two kinds of overlapped partially with an eclipse season. A text reference (paired empiric sidereal intervals of Mars were used, a long one (702 days) eclipse glyphs) to an eclipse season is part of the hieroglyphic that included a retrograde loop and a short one that did not.
    [Show full text]