Mexican and Central American antiquities, calendar systems, and history : twenty-four papers / by Eduard Seler [and others] ; translated from the German under the supervision of Charles P. Bowditch.

  • Seler, Eduard, 1849-1922.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mexican and Central American antiquities, calendar systems, and history : twenty-four papers / by Eduard Seler [and others] ; translated from the German under the supervision of Charles P. Bowditch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    514/838 (page 390)
    four corners of the page and are colored differently (black, yellow, blue, red) according to the point of the compass and represented as beneficial or injurious to the crops. A fifth figure of the rain god, striped white and red, is added in the center to designate the fifth car- dinal point, the center, or the direction from above downward; but there are naturally no dates corresponding to those given with the corner figures, since the four quarters suffice for the divisions of time. Page 69 in Codex Vaticanus B (Kingsborough, page 28) corre- sponds to this one of the Borgian codex. While, however, Codex Vaticanus B is contented with this one page, in the Borgian codex the page just described has a parallel representation placed in juxta- position with it. In this also, page 28 of the Borgian codex (Kings- borough, page 11), there are five figures of the rain god, four dis- tributed at the corners and one in the center. They, too, are desig- nated by the supplementary representations as beneficial or harmful to the growth of the crops; but there seems here to be no underlying reason for the sequence of colors. The order, beginning with the east and ending with the center, is black, white and red striped, yellow, black again, and lastly red. There are dates with each of the five fig- ures, three in each division, which, unfortunately, are partially effaced. As far as they can be distinguished they are as follow: (East) Black rain god Year 1 Acatl (North) White and red striped rain god 2 Tecpatl (West) Yellow rain god 3 Calli (South) Black rain god 4 Tochtli (Center) Red rain god 5 Acatl Day 4 Ollin ? 5 Cipactli 10 Quiauitl 9 Atl 7 Coatl [3] Atl ? Coatl 1 Atl 13 Mazatl Five successive years, then, are specified on this page, and two days are named in each. The day named in the first year in the first place is the day 4 Ollin, which, as explained above, is referred to in the Dresden manuscript as the day on which the morning star disappears in the rays of the rising sun, or when the morning star rises at the same time as the sun. The day named in the fifth year in the first place, the day 1 Atl, “ 1 water ”, is distant from the day 4 Ollin exactly 1,752 days, or three Venus periods. In connection with this it is necessary to remember that, as is usual in the Borgian codex in the case of all computations extending over a longer or shorter series of days, 1 Cipactli is set down as the first day, and the 5 years on this page are reckoned from 1 Cipactli, while the naming of the years, as usual, begins with 1 Acatl. Here the day 1 Atl in the fifth year again denotes the day on which the morning star rises at the same time as the sun. Though I have not yet been able to discover a law for the days lying between and coming after, and must assume for the present that they are only connecting links, that indication from