Some new discoveries respecting the dates on the great calendar stone of the ancient Mexicans, with observations on the Mexican cycle of fifty-two years / [E.G. Squier].

  • Ephraim George Squier
Date:
[1849]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some new discoveries respecting the dates on the great calendar stone of the ancient Mexicans, with observations on the Mexican cycle of fifty-two years / [E.G. Squier]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The existence of this superstition, joined to the circumstance of the year terminating at a time when the recession of the sun was greatest, may have invested this period with so much importance as to make it a chronological era, from whence to date the years anew. However this may be, the conjunctions here noticed offer a better explanation of the singular selection of fifty-two years for the cycle, than is furnished by any analysis of the multiples of which that number is made up. It is not. impossible however, that the further circumstance that the sacred numbers four and thirteen were multiples of fifty-two, may have had a secondary weight in the length of the cycle. Passing by this question, we find that the discovery of the missing date of the winter solstice completes the circle of the sun’s principal positions, as engraved upon the great Calendar Stone—a monument which still furnishes an interesting object of study, and the full understanding of which would no doubt tend greatly to increase our estimate of the astronomical knowl¬ edge and the ingenuity of the aboriginal Mexicans. Note.—The apprehension of the extinguishment of the sun, at the winter solstice, is mentioned by Humboldt as affording a striking instance of the analogy which existed between the super¬ stitions and religious observances of the ancient Mexicans, and the primitive nations of the old world. li When the Egyptians,” says Achilles Tatius, “ saw the sun descend from the Crab towards Capricorn, and the days gradually diminish, they were accustom¬ ed to sorrow from the apprehension that the sun was to abandon them entirely. This Epocha coincided with the festival of Isis : but when the orb began to reappear, and the days grew longer, they robed themselves in white garments, and crowned them¬ selves with flowers.”—Humboldt's Res., vol. i, p. 383.
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