506 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 28 



Die Gottergestalten der Mayaliaiulschriften that it is the glyph of 

 the god C, and that it is a star, the pohir star, in faet. I have recog- 

 nized this meaning from the first, but I would prefer to call it the 

 polar constellation (Ursa Minor). Now, it happened while I was 

 recently examining the remarkable tonalamatl in the Dresden codex. 

 Images 4a to 10a, that I discovered in it a peculiar displacement of 

 time. As a fixed point of departure I found groups 14 and 15, the 

 former representing the tiger, the latter the vulture, with an interval 

 of 2 days between them. There is just the same interval between 

 the Aztec day Ocelotl (jaguar) and Cozcaquauhtli (vulture). This 

 was a very gratifjnng discovery, because it revealed a new point of 

 contact between the Aztec and Maya systems. Now if we reckon 

 back from this passage 23 days to group 5 (page 5) we find god C 

 with his glyph, and are forced, on account of the distance of the 

 days, to place this group wdth the Maya day Chuen or Aztec Ozo- 

 matli (monkey). Finding this to be the case, the question at once 

 flashed through my mind. Does not this glyph in the main repre- 

 sent a monkey's skull? Does it not present an indication of the lat- 

 eral nasal aperture of the American monkey? The Aztec day sign 

 Ozomatli has a certain, though distant, resemblance to this sign. But 

 how are the monkey and Ursa Minor to be connected? I fully be- 

 lieve that the former is more appropriate here than the latter. The 

 polar star is the last star in the tail, but the monkey, after the fashion 

 of its kind, clings with its tail to a fixed point, around which it 

 swings the rest of its body. But I already hear the opponents of this 

 conception, and pass on to a second glyph. 



(2) h. After I had printed my treatise, Zur Entzifferung der 

 Mayahandschriften, V, in 1895, I next undertook the task of ex- 

 amining the 28 groups belonging together on pages 71 to 73 of the 

 Dresden codex, each consisting of three glyphs, and found that they 

 had no connection with the adjacent numbers, but represented a rit- 

 ual year of 3G4 days, divided into 28X13 days. Then I forthwith 

 noticed that groups 4, 11, 18, and 25 contained the glyph given above, 

 in several variants, at intervals of 91 days. Hence nothing was 

 more natural than to see in this sign h a Bacab, a deity of the wind 

 and the cardinal points, since we have long known that each period 

 of 91 days is under the dominion of a particular Bacab. This was 

 full}^ confirmed by a comparison of the 69 groups of glyphs on pages 

 51 to 58, in which I likewise recognized weeks of 13 days. Although 

 the groups are very often destroj'^ed, especially in the first half, the 

 sign appeared again in groups 39, 4G, 53, and GO, and I attached 

 to this fact various observations concerning repetitions after every 

 seven groups. In a third series of glyphs on page 72 at the top, 1 

 again found the Bacab in the eighth member. The number 4 fre- 



