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The Mayan 819-Day Count and the "Y" Glyph:

A probable association with Jupiter

The 819-Day Count was occasionally recorded as part of the Initial Series of Maya monuments.  The classical treatment is in J. Eric S. Thompson Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing (1961:212-217), who looked at the day count intervals between various 819-day-count stations, and established the cycle of 819.  Each sequence of 819 had associated with it one of four colors and a direction (East Red; North White; West Black; South Yellow).  This made for a complete cycle of 3276 days before the same notation would repeat. 

An extended standard set of examples has been available since David Kelley (1976) Decipherment of Mayan Script (1976:56-57), whose letter references are here retained at the heads of columns. 

To those we can add at least three more examples (with thanks to Helen Alexander and to Linda Quist for help in locating these):

     Pomona Stela 7, with a different base date but the same 819-day-count station as Yaxchilan Stela 11

           (Inscriptions of the River Cities, 2007 sourcebook, XXXI Maya Meetings, Austin TX, p.65);

     A Palenque censer stand

           (Mary Miller and Simon Martin 2004 Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya p.225); and

     The recently discovered Palenque Temple XIX platform, south side
           (David Stuart 2005 The Inscriptions from Temple XIX at Palenque p.61).

The last of these is a date in the prior era, before 3114 BCE, as is the long-known example from Palenque Temple of the Cross. These prior-era examples are excluded from the analyses which follow, because astronomy at these dates was presumably not observed, though the information is included in the tables of data. Further early dates with 819-day counts (thanks to Joe Orr) are from the Palenque Cross group (the only one of these in Baktun 9 is inferred, not directly stated), and later dates come from Copan Stela J, from Bonampak Room 1 Initial Series (inferred), and from the Zurich Stela (available in a Mesoweb paper by Peter Biro on Sak Tzi'). But for none of these latter are there certain occurrences of Y glyphs. They do not affect the statistical tables below. However, the additional information is included in the data tables linked to below. These additions were made on 19 Sept. 2008.

The standard verb used for the 819-day-count records occurs also in the Dresden Codex (thanks again to Joe Orr for the reminder, and for the citation to Nikolai Grube and David Stuart (below). It is highly significant that directions and colors are associated, and that the Chacs hold torches (and axes). Together with the 65-day intervals on pages 30b-31b, these associate the 819-day count records with the "Burner" series, a topic discussed later.
The cited paragraph is from ( http://www.mesoweb.com/bearc/cmr/08_text.html ). We can add pages 29b-31b.
     <<Another case of clear substitution involving T110 occurs in Almanac 59 (pages 31b-35b) of the Dresden Codex (Fig. 4). In this almanac Chacs of the four colors and directions bear torches and axes. The texts accompanying the pictures follow the same syntactical structure in all four cases. Each text begins with a directional glyph (31b, east; 32b, north; 33b, west; 34b, south) and the compound T588b:140.181, which is otherwise known as the standard verb for 819-day-count phrases.>>

PLEASE ANYONE WHO HAS STILL FURTHER EXAMPLES, let this author know: ecoling@aol.com

The "Y" glyph linked to a number occurs with a number of 819-day-count records.  It also occurs independently, when the rest of the 819-day count is not present.  In a 1991 study "Glyph Y of the Maya Supplementary Series" (Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing no.34), Yoshiho Yasugi and Kenji Saito established that most of the numbers with "Y" glyphs are compatible with a cycle of 7 (three examples appear not to be consistent with that).  Since 819 = 7 x 9 x 13, that means that given numbers with "Y" glyphs are linked to a subset of the possibilities in the 819-day count.  It turns out that a zero point for the 819-day count is also a zero-point for the "Y" glyph cycle of 7.

The glyph for K'awiil (the god with the "smoking mirror" in his forehead) occurs with many of the 819-day-count records, and K'awiil has often been suggested as having a possible link to Jupiter.  A particularly strong advocate of this has been Susan Milbrath (1999 Star Gods of the Maya, Univ. of Texas Press).  Floyd Lounsbury long ago discovered an interval of 207 x 399 (the whole-day approximation to Jupiter's synodic cycle) which could help to explain some enigmatic calendrics in Palenque's Temple of the Sun (Schele 1987 p.87). So we examine such a hypothesis based on these sets of data.  The hypothesis seems to be confirmed overall, but there seem to be a few exceptions to the pattern.

Please download two files in .pdf format to use with the following text.  Each of the two files contains a table which will print as six pages, and a graph which will print as one page.  The six pages should be placed side-by-side as three double-long pages.  You can disregard the graphs for most of this discussion. 

Click here for a table of 819-day counts and associated texts, with planetary positions

Click here for a table of Y glyphs not part of 819-day counts, with planetary positions

Summary results:

Among the 819-day-count records for historical dates (excluding the two preceding 3114 BCE), there is a strong correlation between those which include a "Y" glyph, and those for which Jupiter at that 819-day-count station had recently emerged from conjunction with the Sun.  A similar tally for Saturn produces a similar result, but the patterning is not quite as strong.  We may hypothesize that the "Y" glyph has something to do with a young Jupiter during the first part of its synodic cycle, up to its 1^st stationary point.  (But the choice to record an 819-day count with a "Y" glyph might also have been influenced by similar positions for Saturn.)

There are two additional clues which might be compatible with this hypothesis, though there is too little data to be sure.  In one case with no "Y" glyph, where Jupiter is approximately 22 days after its 2^nd stationary point, starting to fall into the Sun, we have the text yo-k(o) K'AN-na which quite plausibly may refer to entering the K'AN (cross, perhaps the place of origin which is sometimes shown in a turtle shell, or perhaps the color yellow or a meaning "precious").  The expression Chan Ch'e'n also follows in this text.  A secondary hypothesis might be useful, that Jupiter was viewed in this case as "entering the Sun", the precious and yellow place of origin, and perhaps the "sky sanctuary" (see below; taking one of the connotations of ch'e'n "cave").

In this small set of data, there seems to be no strong correlation with directions or colors. The expression Chan Ch'e'n occurs five times, never together with a "Y" glyph.  Chan Ch'e'n occurs once with the direction "south", once with the color "black" (and conceivably an unusual reference to "west"), once with "north/white", once with the yo-k(o) K'AN-na mentioned above, and once where the remaining text is not recoverable.  Of these, only the single occurrence with "north/white" would argue against the second hypothesis that chan ch'e'n refers to disappearance in the Sun.  Chan Ch'e'n occurs twice with K'awiil or K'awiil-nal, but appears to be incompatible with Hun Ch'ok in the standard word order.  They co-occur only once when Hun Ch'ok occurs immediately after a different verb. The expression Hun Ch'ok follows K'awiil in 5 instances, all of which have a "Y" glyph.  That could be compatible with a reading of ch'ok as "sprout", again invoking the young Jupiter.  For other probable uses of ch'ok to refer to planets, please see also Anderson (under revision 2008) Planetary Tables in the Dresden Codex of the Maya.

The verb standard for 819-day count records is replaced by a different verb in two records which probably have no "Y" Glyph.  The standard verb occurs in seven records which either have a "Y" glyph or have a young Jupiter, mostly both characteristics, and in two others which lack either the first or both of those characteristics.  This may be consistent with a reading of "original/first sprout" for the Hun Ch'ok and some reading for the 819-day-count verb analogous to either the "waxing" of the moon, or to a meaning like "emerge".

Although positions of Mercury and Venus are also tabulated in the lower parts of the tables for these 819-day-count stations, and below those, positions of four planets are tabulated for the base dates on the same monuments, nothing is so obvious as to suggest further hypotheses to this writer at this time.  (Positions of Mars have not seemed as likely to be significant, after a more cursory examination.)

Turning to the "Y" glyph, in texts where there is no written 819-day-count record, we can view a summary table similar to the one earlier, by considering the positions of the planets at the hypothetical 819-day-count station if the Maya had chosen to record it, the one nearest preceding the base date.  The Yasugi and Saito (1991) compilation of "Y" glyph examples distinguishes those with numbered "Y" (or "Z") glyphs from others which we here note "+" or "x", and suggest are not merely damaged or incomplete texts. 

Again the patterning is stronger with Jupiter than with Saturn, but there is again a slight hint that Saturn in similar positions may still be relevant.

There seem to be very few additional glyphs in the texts to analyze for these examples.  However, there may be a pattern in the other planets.  The difficulty is to determine what the ancient Maya chose to pay attention to in these situations.  For the hypothetical 819-day counts, 7 have Mercury either in superior conjunction with the Sun or just following that, of which five have a numbered "Y" glyph, and two are of the "+" type.  The three examples from Xcalumk'in and Ixk'un all have Mercury descending as evening star, preceding inferior conjunction, and the glyphic records are of the "x" and "+" types, respectively.  These last three have Jupiter, Jupiter and Mars, or all three exterior planets in retrograde portions of their cycles.  This is quite the opposite of what was typical for 819-day counts with "Y" glyphs.

On the whole, it seems that the hypotheses proposed here are worth continued investigation (11 supportive cases vs. 3 inconsistent, for Jupiter, and 11 supportive vs. 4 inconsistent, for Saturn). That is about the same level of support as presented by Yoshiho and Saito (1991) for the hypothesis that the numbering of the "Y" glyph reflects a cycle of 7. But it is not clear from this data precisely how to further refine the hypotheses presented here.. 

The two graphs were produced as part of the downloadable files to explore whether the records of 819-day stations and other records of "Y" glyphs had more or less the same distribution of distances linking the recorded vs. inferrable 819-day-count stations with the base dates which they closely precede.  Apparently they do, so there seems little to add from this.