127 
Twenty moons, or sunas^ forming the vulgar 
year of the Mnyscas, called zocam^ we conceive, 
that the zocam was only a small lunar cycle, and 
not a year in the real sense of the words annus, 
annulus, §v/uvToq, which suppose the return of a 
star to the point from which it departed. The 
zocam and the great cycle of twenty intercalary 
years probably owe their origin only to a pre- 
ference given to the number twenty, gueta. Be- 
side the zocam, the Muyscas had an astronomi- 
cal cycle, a year of the priests, appointed for 
religious festivals, and containing thirty-seven 
moons ; as well as a rural year, which was rec- 
koned from one season of rains to another. 
The sunas had no peculiar denomination, as 
we find among the Egyptians, the Persians, the 
Hindoos, and the Mexicans ; they were dis- 
tinguished only by their number. This custom 
appears to me the oldest in eastern Asia ; it is 
preserved even in our days among the Chinese, 
and was followed by the Jews till the period of 
the Babylonian captivity. But the inhabitants 
of Cundinamurca did not reckon in their three 
calendars, rural, civil and religious, as far as 
twelve, twenty, or thirty-seven ; they employed 
for the sunas, as well as for the days of the same 
moon, only the first ten numbers and their hiero- 
glyphics. The first month of the second agri- 
cultural year was governed by the sign mica, 
three ; the third month of the third year, by the 
