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THE MAYAN CIVILIZATION 101 
vear, 10 the third, 15 the fourth, and 0 the fifth. While 
Manik that belongs to the same set has position 5 the 
first vear, 10 the second, etc. It will be noted that Imix, 
the first day of the formal tonalamatl is never the first 
day of a month. 
The Calendar Round. But this assignment of 
particular day names toparticular placesin the month does 
not close the problem. Each day name is associated in 
the tonalamatl with a day number. While it is true that 
each day can occupy only four month places of as many 
years, it must be remembered that the day numbers as- 
sociated with these names can run the whole gamut of 13 
changes. The result of this permutation is that a par- 
ticular day with a particular number can occupy a par- 
ticular month position once every 13x4 or 52 years. In 
other words, the cycle of variations runs through the least 
common multiple of 260 (the tonalamatl) and 365 (the 
conventional year) or 18,980 days. This cycle is com- 
monly known as the Calendar Round. 
A Mayan day fixed in a month has four parts to its 
name, thus, 11 Ahau 18 Mac. But after all this condi- 
tion of affairs is not very different from our own. We 
say Tuesday, July 4, and we mean, ‘* Tuesday, the 
second day of the week, falls on the fourth day of 
the month of July.” Similarly the Mayan date 11 
Ahau 18 Mac may be read, ‘‘The day Ahau, bearing 
the index number 11 (or, being the eleventh day in the 
thirteen day week) is found in the 18th position in the 
month Mac.’’ Were it not for leap year the European 
date given above would recur after seven years: as it is, 
the cycle is somewhat irregular and no actual use is 
made of it. So far we have considered two sorts of 
Mayan dates, first the tonalamatl date, recurring 
every 260 days, second the calendar round date recur- 
ring every 18,980 days. 
