272 BUEEAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 57 



for more than a thousand 3^ears. On the other hand, if 8.6.16.12.0 

 records the present time of the manuscript, then all the following 

 dates are prophetic. It is a difficult question to answer, and the 

 best authorities have seemed disposed to take a middle course, 

 assigning as the contemporaneous date of the codex a date about the 

 middle of Cycle 9. Says Professor Forstemann {Bulletin 28, p. 402) 

 on the subject: 



In my opinion my demonstration also definitely proves that these large numbers 

 [the Initial Series] do not proceed from the future to the past, but from the past, 

 through the present, to the future. Unless I am quite mistaken, the highest numbers 

 among them seem actually to reach into the future, and thus to have a prophetic 

 meaning. Here the question arises, At what point in this series of numbers does the 

 present lie? or, Has the writer in different portions of his work adopted different 

 points of time as the present? If I may venture to express my conjecture, it seems 

 to me that the first large number in the whole manuscript, the 1,366,560 in the second 

 column of page 24 [9.9.16.0.0 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu, the first Initial Series figured in plate 

 31], has the greatest claim to be interpreted as the present point of time. 



In a later article {Bulletin 28, p. 437) Professor Forstemann says: 

 ''But I think it is more probable that the date farthest to the right 

 (1 Ahau, 18 Zip . . . ) denotes the present, the other two 

 [namely, 9.9.16.0.0 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu and 9.9.9.16.0 1 Ahau 18 Kayab] 

 alludmg to remarkable days in the future." He assigns to this date 

 1 Ahau 18 Zip the position of 9.7.16.12.0 in the Long Count. 



The A\Titer believes this theory to be untenable because it involves 

 a correction in the original text. The date which Professor Forste- 

 mann calls 1 Ahau 18 Zip actually reads 1 Ahau 18 TJo, as he himself 

 admits. The month sign he corrects to Zip in spite of the fact that 

 it is very clearly TJo. Compare this form with figure 20, h, c. The 

 date 1 Ahau 18 Uo occurs at 9.8.16.16.0, but the writer sees no reason 

 for believing that this date or the reading suggested by Professor 

 Forstemann indicates the contemporaneous time of this manuscript. 



Mr. Bowditch assigns the manuscript to approximately the same 

 period, selecting the second Initial Series in plate 31, that is, 

 9.9.9.16.0 1 Ahau 18 Kayab: "My opinion is that the date 9.9.9.16.0 

 1 Ahau 18 Kayab is the present time with reference to the time of 

 WTiting the codex and is the date from which the whole calculation 

 starts."" The reasons which have led Mr. Bowditch to this conclu- 

 sion are very convincing and will make for the general acceptance of 

 his hypothesis. 



Although the writer has no better suggestion to offer at the i)resent 

 time, he is inclined to believe that both of these dates are far too 

 early for this manuscri])t and that it is to be ascribed to a very much 

 later period, perhaps to the centuries following immediately the colo- 

 nization of Yucatan. There can be no doubt that very early dates 

 appear in the Dresden Codex, but rather than accept one so early as 



1 Bowditch, 1909: p. 279. 



