FORSTEMANN] THE NUMBERS 437 



C, 4. precisel}'^ the date IV Ahau, 8 Ciimkii. This last date, answer- 

 ing to onr 28th of June, may be regarded as the day of the greatest 

 heat, or the day on which the sun ends its solstice. The correspond- 

 ing number, 1,306,560, combines many properties. It is divisible by 

 the period of the seiiores de la noche, or lords of the cycle, 9 times 

 151,840 being therefore nine times the number which we find at the 

 apex of the great series; by the tonalamatl, 260X5,256; by old 

 official years, 360X3,796; by solar years, 365X3,744; hj Venus years, 

 584X2,340; by Mars years, 780X1,752: by solar Venus periods, 

 2,920X468; by the solar-year tonalamatl, 18,980X72; by twice the 

 latter, the period so important in the series. 37,960X36; and by the 

 periods before mentioned that are usually designated as ahau katuns, 



113,880X12- 



It should also be mentioned that the first number is removed from 

 this third one by 14,160 days (equal to 11,960+2,200). Hence the 

 difference between them is 14,040, mentioned above as a remarkable 

 number, increased by the interval betAveen I Ahau and IV Ahau, 

 that is, 120, also mentioned above. 



This number is the real- objective point of our page. It lies, like 

 almost all tiie large numbers in the manuscript (except those in the 

 serpents), between one and one and a half millions. Did it represent 

 to the writer of the manuscript the present, the past (history), or 

 the future (prophecy) ? Perhaps it may serve to elucidate the mat- 

 ter further if I remark that the monuments of Copan, described by 

 Maudslay, the dates of which most probably refer to the present, all 

 contain a number of greater magnitude and therefore point to a more 

 recent period than the page under consideration. I here give a 

 number of such dates : 



Altar S 1,375,200 Stela I 1,.S83,760 Stela .T 1.393.200 



Altar K 1.402,768 Stela A 1,403.800 Stelr. B 1.404.000 



Stela J\I 1.41.3,000 Stela N 1.414.800 



From this it follows that this degree of civilization, if it survived 

 in Copan until the arrival of the Spaniards, probably produced no 

 monument of such a character before the year 1400. If page 24 of 

 the Dresden manuscript indicates the present bv this important num- 

 ber, it was written 132 years before the latest monument of Copan, 

 mentioned above, and 24 years before the oldest. But I think it is 

 more probable that the date farthest to the right (I Ahau, 18 Zip, 

 year 10 Kan) denotes the present, the other two alluding to re- 

 markable days in the future. In that case, this page is 39 years older. 

 The number indicating the present might then have been omitted as a 

 matter of course and of little significance, while a reference to as- 

 tronomic events of the future was of more importance. Of course, it 

 is taken for granted that the initial point of the computation is the 

 same for the monuments of Copan as in the Dresden manuscript. 



