Star Gods of the Maya by Susan Milbrath

Author:Susan Milbrath
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2013-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE LAYOUT OF PAGES 46–50

In Dresden Codex 46–50, each of the five pages covers 584 days, with a cumulative total across five pages of 2,920 days, equaling five Venus cycles or eight solar years of 365 days (Fig. 5.3a–e). The thirteen rows of Tzolkin dates at the top indicate that the table was reused thirteen times for a total of 65 (13 × 5) Venus Rounds or 104 vague years (65 d × 584 d = 37,960 d = 104 y = 146 Tzolkins). Thus the table relates the Venus cycle to the solar year and the Great Cycle of two Calendar Rounds (2 × 52 years). The Venus Round interval of 584 days is slightly longer than the true length of the Venus cycle (583.92 days), so an error of approximately 5 days accumulated over 104 years (Lounsbury 1983:9).

Thompson (1960:77, 218, 299; 1972:65) notes that the idealized Venus cycle always ended on the day 1 Ahau, a day that probably named Venus at heliacal rise. Because two columns of Tzolkin dates on page 47 include 1 Ahau dates, a new 1 Ahau base could be adopted when the calendar strayed too far from the real heliacal rise date (Fig. 5.3g). Apparently, the Maya waited to make correction until they were about to complete 65 Venus Rounds in the second run through the table so that they could reuse the 1 Ahau Tzolkin date (Lounsbury 1983:4–11, table 3; Thompson 1972:62–63). With a mean drift of 5.2 days after 65 Venus Rounds (104 years), they could wait until the next cycle on the 57th Venus Round, when the total would be around 8 days, allowing them to recover the 1 Ahau date. They did so by shifting the 1 Ahau day assigned to the last visibility of the Evening Star to the first rise of the Morning Star, taking advantage of the 8-day interval that occurs between those dates on page 47 in the table. This required a shift in the corresponding month as well.

Lounsbury notes that between A.D. 934 and 1129, the table shifted from 1 Ahau 18 Kayab (used in Bases A–D) to 1 Ahau 18 Uo (Base F). Through such calculations a series of base dates have been reconstructed for the table as follows: 9.9.9.16.0 1 Ahau 18 Kayab (Base A), 9.14.15.6.0 1 Ahau 18 Kayab (Base B), 10.0.0.14.0 1 Ahau 18 Kayab (Base C), 10.5.6.4.0 1 Ahau 18 Kayab (Base D), 10.10.11.12.0 1 Ahau 18 Kayab (Base E), 10.15.4.2.0 1 Ahau 18 Uo (Base F), 11.0.3.1.0 1 Ahau 13 Mac (Base G), with the last base on 11.5.2.0.0 1 Ahau 3 Xul falling in the fourteenth century. In the layouts proposed by Lounsbury (1983, table 3) and Aveni (1992, table 4), the base dates fall at the end of a 104-year run through the table, marking the transition from one cycle to another at the time of heliacal rise. Thus in Thompson’s layout (Fig. 5.3j), 1 Ahau in line 13 is linked with 13 Mac in line 14 to form the date 11.

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