MEXTCiAN PICTURE WRITINGS FRAGMENT I 



Table IV. 



137 



In my treatise, already mentioned above," I laid stress on the fact 

 that the origin of this nomenclature lies in the acceptance of a year of 

 365 days, and that the years were simply named after a certain lead- 

 ing day. In fact, if we assume, for instance, that in one year the 

 leading day was the second one in table III, page 186, bearing the sign 

 Tecpatl and the numeral 13, then in the next year, that is, after the 

 lapse of 365 days, the same day would take the sign Calli and the 

 numeral 1, and so on. Now, at the outset it is most natural to suppose 

 that this leading day, from which the year was first named, was the 

 first day of the year, and that the first days of the consecutive years 

 bore the signs Acatl, Tecpatl, Calli, and Tochtli. It can not well 

 be denied, as I demonstrated in the above-mentioned article,^ that at 

 the time and place it first occurred to scholars that only four of the 

 twenty day signs fell upon the first days of the years, it was those 

 very days Acatl, Tecpatl, Calli, and Tochtli with which the years 

 then and in that place began, or at least that these days were then and 

 in that place, for whatsoever reason, chosen as the first days of the 

 years. To be sure, the admission of this contradicts the assertions of 

 Duran and those of Cristobal del Castillo, quoted and used by Leon y 

 Gama, as these make the Mexican year begin with Cipactli, that is, 

 with Cipactli, Miquiztli, Ozomatli, and Cozcaquauhtli, respectively. 

 But I saw an indirect proof of my theory in the circumstance that 

 ancient records from two remote and widely separated places, Mez- 

 titlan on the borders of Huaxteca and Nicaragua, made the series of 

 twenty day signs begin with Acatl; and I furnished a direct proof 

 by showing that in the Mayan manuscript at Dresden the years do 

 not indeed begin with Kan, Muluc, Ix, and Cauac, with which, 

 according to Landa and the books of Chilam Balam, the Mayas began 

 their years in later times, but with Been, Ezanab, Akbal, and Lamat, 



« Zeitschi-ift fiir Ethnologie, 1891, v. 22. 

 » Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, v. 23, p. 102. 



