123 
tainty respecting the lunar calendar of the Muys- 
cas^ and the origin of their numerical hiero- 
glyphics, has no need of being supported by 
arguments taken from the grammar of a lan- 
guage, which we may almost consider as dead. 
* 
We have already seen, that the Muyscas had 
neither the decades of the Chinese and the Greeks, 
the half-decades of the Mexicans and the people 
of Benin the small periods of nine days of the 
Peruvians, the ogdoades of the Romans, nor the 
weeks of seven days {schehiias) of the Hebrews, 
which we find in Egypt, and in India, but which 
were known neither among the inhabitants of 
Latium and Etruria, nor among the Persians and 
Japanese. The Muysca week was distinguished 
from all known in the history of chronology ; it 
had only three days. Ten of these groups formed 
a lunation, called suna, high road^ paved road^ 
dyke, on account of the sacrifice which was cele- 
brated every month, at the period of the full 
Moon, in a public place, to which in every vil- 
lage the high road {suna) led from the house 
{tithua) of the chief of the tribe. 
The suna did not begin at the New Moon, as 
among the greater part of the nations of the old 
world ; but on the day after the full Moon, of 
which the hieroglyphic was a frog, represented 
on the intercalary stone (PI. 44, fig. 1 a). The 
* Palirj; de I’ Etude des 14 ierogly plies, torn. 1, p. 52. 
