AZTEC CALENDAR WEEK, MONTH, YEAR, CYCLE. 115 



stone, the same two figures which are drawn in the second plate. 

 They evidently represent a victor and a prisoner. The conqueror 

 is in the act of tearing the plumes from the crest of the vanquished, 

 who bows beneath the blow and lowers his weapons. The simi- 

 larity of these figures to some that are delineated in the first 

 volume of Stephens*' Yucatan is remarkable. 



The Aztec Calendar Stone, another monument of Mexican 

 antiquity, was found in December, 1790, buried under ground in the 

 great square of the capital. Like the idol image of Teoyaomiqui, 

 and the sacrificial stone, it is carved from a mass of basalt, and is 

 eleven feet eight inches in diameter, the depth of its circular edge 

 being about seven and a half inches from the fractured square of 

 rock out of which it was originally cut. It is supposed, from the 

 fact that it was found beneath the pavement of the present plaza, 

 that it was part of the fixtures of the great Teocalli of Tenoch- 

 titlan, or that it was placed in some of the adjoining edifices or 

 palaces surrounding the temple. It is now walled into the west 

 side of the cathedral, and is a remarkable specimen of the talent 

 of the Indians for sculpture, at the same time that its huge mass, 

 together with those of the sacrificial stone and the idol Teoyao- 

 miqui, denote the skill of their inventors in the movement of 

 immense weights, without the aid of horses. 



The Aztecs calculated their civil year by the solar ; they divided 

 it into eighteen months of twenty days each, and added five 

 complimentary days, as in Egypt, to make up the complete number 

 of three hundred and sixty-five. After the last of these months 

 the five nemontemi or " useless days" were intercalated, and, 

 belonging to no particular month, were regarded as unlucky, by the 

 sur/erstitious natives. Their week consisted of five days, the last 

 of which was the market day ; and a month was composed of four 

 of these weeks. As the tropical year is composed of about six 

 hours more than three hundred and sixty-five days, they lost a day 

 every fourth year, which they supplied, not at the termination of 

 that period, but at the expiration of their cycle of fifty-two years, 

 when they intercalated the twelve days and a half that were lost. 

 Thus it was found, at the period of the Spanish conquest, that 

 their computation of time corresponded with the European, as 

 calculated by the most accurate astronomers. 



At the end of the Aztec or Toltec cycle of fifty-two years, — 

 for it is not accurately ascertained to which of the tribes the as- 

 tronomical science of Tenochtitlan is to be attributed, — these 



