MORLBY] INTRODUCTION TO STUDY OF MAYA HIEEOGLYPHS 113 



shown in figure 57, a, h, but also satisfactorily provides for the enu- 

 meration of the cycles from 1 to 13, inclusive. 



If the date "4 Ahau 8 Cumhu ending Cycle 13" be regarded as a 

 Period-ending date, not as indicating that the number of cycles in a 

 great cycle was restricted to 13, the next question is — Did a great 

 cycle also come to an end on the date 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu — the starting 

 point of Maya chronology and the closing date of a Cycle 13 ? That 

 it did the writer is firmly convinced, although final proof of the point 

 can not be presented until numerical series containing more than 5 

 terms shall have been considered. (See pp. 114-127 for this discus- 

 sion.) The following points, however, which may be introduced 

 here, tend to prove tliis condition: 



1 . In the natural course of affairs the Maya would have commenced 

 their chronology with the beginning of some great cycle, and to have 

 done this in the Maya system of counting time — that is, by elapsed 

 periods — it was necessary to reckon from the end of the preceding 

 great cycle as the starting- point. 



2. Moreover, it would seem as though the natural cycle with which 

 to commence counting time would be a Cycle 1 , and if this were done 

 time would have to be counted from a Cycle 13, since a Cycle 1 could 

 follow only a Cycle 13. 



On these two probabilities, together with the discussion on pages 

 114-127, the writer is inclined to beHeve that the Maya com- 

 menced their chronology with the begiiming of a great cycle, whose 

 first cycle was named Cycle 1, which was reckoned from the close 

 of a great cycle whose ending cycle was a Cycle 13 and whose ending 

 day fell on the date 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu. 



The second point (see p. 108) on which rests the h3^pothesis of "13 

 cycles to a great cycle" in the inscriptions admits of no such plausible 

 explanation as the first point. Indeed, it will probably never be 

 known why in two inscriptions the Maya reckoned time from a start- 

 ing point different from that used in all the others, one, moreover, 

 which was 13 cycles in advance of the other, or more than 5,000 years 

 earlier than the beginning of their chronology, and more than 8,000 

 years earlier than the begmning of their historic period. That this 

 remoter starting point, 4 Ahau 8 Zotz, from which proceed so far as 

 known only two inscriptions throughout the whole Maya area, stood 

 at the end of a great cycle the writer does not believe, in view of 

 the evidence presented on pages 114-127. On the contrary, the 

 material given there tends to show that although the cycle which 

 ended on the day 4 Ahau 8 Zotz was also named Cycle 13,^ it was the 

 8th division of the grand cycle which ended on the day 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu, 



1 That it was a Cycle 13 is shown from the fact that it was just 13 cycles in advance of Cycle 13 ending 

 on the date 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu. 



43508°— Bull. 57—15 — -8 



