roRSTEMANN] TORTOISE AND SNAIL IN MAYA LITERATURE 427 



to have been regarded by the Mayas as the true middle of the sol- 

 stice, as the longest day. 



It will be a slight digression if, at this point, I glance at the 

 eighteenth month Cnmku, immediately succeeding KaA'ab, which is 

 certainly the hottest one of the year. To Stephens's book. Incidents 

 of Travel in Yucatan (London, 1843), is appended a treatise on the 

 Maya calendar by Perez, a man living in Yucatan, and there we find 

 the statement that cumku means thunderclap. The hieroglyph of 

 the month agrees with this, for in it we see two flashes of lightning 

 (or hot sunbeams?) darting down from the same point upon the 

 maize field (kan). In the above-mentioned passage of the Dresden 

 codex, page 40, the lightning beast as it rushes down from heaven 

 follow^s directly after the person with the tortoise's head and the two 

 torches (see d). In this month the eighth day, the normal date 

 already mentioned, is the most important of all. Are we to infer 

 from this that the Maya chronology dates from the day of the sun's 

 greatest heat, the day in Avhich the sun has the greatest power? 

 (See e.) 



Not only in the manuscripts does the tortoise occur, but also on the 

 stone monuments of the Mayas. At least, I read of its discovery in 

 Copan in Stephens's Incidents of Travel in Central America, volume 

 1 (New York, 1842), page 155: "The altar is buried with the top 

 barely visible, which, by excavating, we made out to represent the 

 back of a tortoise '\ 



The tortoise seldom occurs in Aztec mommients, but, my attention 

 having been drawn to it by Mrs Nuttall, I can prove that it occurs 

 at least in the Vienna manuscript in Kingsborough, volunie 2, ap- 

 parently in a calendric context. 



I Avill also mention an Aztec stone calendar excavated in 1790, 

 which is represented under the erroneous title of " El Zodiaco '', in 

 Nebel's Voyage dans la partie la plus interessante du Mexique (Paris. 

 1830, folio). Here we find two tortoise heads, one on either side of 

 the central picture, representing the sun. 



We may also note that in the Old "World the crab (among the con- 

 stellations and correspondingly in the Tro))ic of Cancer) is used in- 

 stead of the tortoise, it being also a slow-paced creature encased in a 

 shell and the symbol of retrogression at the same time. 



I have ventured, in the second place, although not so confidently as 

 in the case of the tortoise, to connect the snail with the winter solstice. 

 This occurs in the month JNIol, the eighth of the Maya year. In this 

 month the death, relatively speaking, and also the new birth of the 

 sun, takes place. We must therefore endeavor to seek the relations of 

 the snail to birth, to death, to the sun. and. if possible, to the month 

 aiol. 



It is alreadv known to science, and widelv acknowledged, that the 



