SKLER] MEXICAN PICTURE WRITINGS FRAGMENT I 1 43 



ered by coniputation, and that perhaps in doing this they reckoned 

 back not 044, but 043, days, possibly because leap year was not taken 

 into account. 



If this be denied, and if the assertions of Chimalpahiii nnd the 

 account in the Sahagun manuscript that the ninth day of the month 

 Quecholli was a day Ehecatl — the only statements to my knowledge 

 where there is a distinct agreement between the day of the month and 

 the name of the day— be considered correct, we should arrive at the 

 days Ocelotl, Quiauitl, Cuetzpalin, and Atl as the first days of the 

 years named for the characters Acatl, Tecpatl, Calli, and Tochtli. 

 This result is at first sight rather attractive. We should thus ssrrive 

 at precisely the characters which answer to the signs Ix, Cauac, Kan, 

 and Muluc, with which the Mayas began their years in later times. It 

 would then follow that the correction which was made by the Mayas 

 also found acceptance among the Mexicans. I believe, however, 

 since there are no other proofs, and since our computation is upheld 

 by the statements of historians, that if the ninth day of Quecholli 

 had been a day Ehecatl only 643 days would have elapsed before the 

 capture of Quauhtemoc, and then, one of the two above dates, that 

 given by Bernal Diaz or that given by Cortes, would have to be cor- 

 rected; and since reasons of a general nature, as I have said before, 

 favor the view I have advanced we must not lay too much stress on 

 this one assertion, especially as an error seems ver}'^ probable. As I 

 have already said, it is our manuscript, Avith its festival dates run- 

 ning through nearly nineteen years, which furnishes decisive evi- 

 dence. Chimalpahin wrote at the beginning of the seventeenth 

 century and the Sahagun manuscript was com])osed about the yenv 

 1559. At those jjeriods the ancient mode of reckoning the festival 

 dates had long since fallen into disuse. The manuscript of the Hum- 

 boldt collection is of ancient date, as is showr. by the style cf the 

 drawing and by the dress of the figures. Its testimony is of decisive 

 value. 



After settling these points, which are generally necessary and 

 also useful for the proper understanding of our manuscript, I now 

 return to the dates given in columns a and b of our manuscrij)t. In 

 the beginning of this chapter I mentioned that the lower part of the 

 manuscript is incomplete, that the upper part seems to be the ar-tual 

 end of the strip, and that the strip was not further written upon 

 because, for some reason, entries were no longer made. It would be 

 iTiteresting if we could determine to which one of our years the \ear 

 corresponds in which the last entries were made. The entries of 

 material objects, of whose nature I shall speak directly, fill columns 

 c and E. The last entries were made, as a glance at the manuscript 

 shows, in the month Ochpaniztli of that j^ear in v.'hich the feast 

 Etzalqualiztli was celebrated on the ,day 3 Ehecatl. In this year, as 



