MORLFA] INTRODUCTION TO STUDY OF MAYA HIEROGLYPHS 55 



Table VI. POSITIONS OF DAYS IN DIVISIONS OF MAYA YEAR 



But we have seen on page 47 and in Table IV that the Maya did 

 not designate the first days of the several divisions of the years ac- 

 cording to our system. It was shown there that the first day of Pop 

 was not written 1 Pop, but Pop, and similarly the second day of 

 Pop was written not 2 Pop, but 1 Pop, and the last day, not 20 Pop, 

 but 19 Pop. Consequently, before we can use the names in Table 

 VI as the Maya used them, we must make this shift, keeping in mind, 

 however, that Ik, Manik, Eb, and Caban (the only four of the twenty 

 names which could begin the year and which were written Pop, 

 5 Pop, 10 Pop, or 15 Pop) would be written in our notation 1st Pop, 

 6tli Pop, 11th Pop, and 16tli Pop, respectively. This difference, as 

 has been previously explained, results from the Maya method of 

 counting time by elapsed periods. 



Table VII shows the positions of the days in the divisions of the 

 year according to the Maya conception, that is, with the shift in the 

 month coefficient made necessary by this practice of recording their 

 days as elapsed time. 



The student wiU find Table VII very useful in deciphering the texts, 

 since it shows at a glance the only positions which any given day can 

 occupy in the divisions of the year. Therefore when the sign for a 

 day has been recognized in the texts, from Table VII can be ascer- 

 tained the only four positions which this day can hold in the month, 

 thus reducing the number of possible month coefficients for which 

 search need be made, from twenty to four. 



Table VII. 



POSITIONS OF DAYS IN DIVISIONS OF MAYA YEAR 

 ACCORDING TO MAYA NOTATION 



Now let us summarize the points which we have successively 

 established as resulting from the combination of the tonalamatl and 

 haab, remembering always that as yet we have been dealing only with 



