272 



CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



The results of this investigation were most promising — no less than 

 the discovery of the system of dating used in the New Empire, as 

 noted above. This was found to be a kind of Period Ending dating, 

 and its discovery was made possible by the decipherment of the so- 

 called ''winged-Cauac" glyph, which proved to be another variant 

 of the tun sign. Mr. Morley had previously shown that the ''winged 

 Cauac" had this meaning in the hotun sign;* and its extension to a 

 more general use in Period Ending dating with coefficients other than 

 5, as already noted in the case of the hotun sign, was a logical devel- 

 opment of Maya chronological practices. 



The system was variously employed, the several methods in use 

 depending for their varying degrees of accuracy upon the number of 

 factors present. The simplest is merely the record of a given day 

 falling in a given tun — for example, the day 6 Kan in Tun 9. As 

 very Tun 9 contained one day 6 Kan, and some two such days, and 

 as a Tun 9 recurred every 19.71 years, this method was not very 

 accurate. Happily it does not seem to have been used much, 

 occurring only once in the 16 cases under observation. 



The commonest method (being used in half of the cases) is the record 

 of a given tun and the day upon which it ended, as for example Tun 13 

 ending on the day 2 Ahau. Such a date could not recur fulfilling all the 

 given conditions until after a lapse of 256.26 years. As most of the 

 New Empire sites were 

 not founded until after Q__PO 

 950 A. D., and at the 

 most were occupied less 

 than 500 years, it is never 

 necessary in such cases to 

 distinguish between more 

 than two possible read- 

 ings, and usually only one 

 is historically probable. 



By the addition of the day of the month to the above 

 method, as Tun 11 ending on the day 2 Ahau 18 Xul (a 

 date found in the Temple of the High Priest's Grave at 

 Chichen Itza, see fig. 2), accuracy within a far greater 

 stretch of time was secured, no less indeed than within 

 a period of 18,707 years. 



A third method, which occurs in 6 out of the 16 cases, is far more 

 accurate than even the preceding. It involves the use of a Calendar 

 Round date with a given tun, ending on a given day. For example, 

 10 Ix 17 Pop faUing in a Tun 17 ending on the day 12 Ahau. Such 



Fig. 2. — Text engraved on front of a 

 column in the Temple of the High 

 Priest's Grave at Chichen Itza. The 

 date is expressed by the first and last 

 two characters "2 Ahau 18 Xul end- 

 ing Tun 11," which corresponds to 

 the year 1350 A. D. 



* The Hotun as the principal chronological unit of the Old Empire. S. G. Morley. Pro- 

 ceedings of the Nineteenth International Congress of Americanists, Washington, D. C, 1915, 

 pp. 195-201. 



