530 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
lacking to the end,” and finally, the certainty that 9 Imix 18 Zip (1. ¢., corrected to 
19 Zip) could not have been the day of Napot Xiu’s death if he died in 1536, as all 
sources agree, have led him to reject the more detailed data in these three passages 
and to accept only the larger fact in which they all concur, namely that Napot Xiu 
died in 1536 in Katun 13 Ahau, which also agrees so remarkably with all the other 
events described. 
Goodman, of all the American investigators, assigns the most recent dates to 
the Old Empire cities; his correlation, like the others, is based upon the evidence 
furnished by the chronicles in the Books of Chilan Balam, which, however, he inter- 
prets differently from everybody else: 
“Thus the assurance given us by the annual calendar is made doubly sure, and we may 
rest certain that the 13 Ahau 7 Xul [7.¢., 8 Xul], which fell on October 30, 1539, was the end 
of a 13 Ahau katun [7. ¢., Katun 13 Ahau] in the Xiu chronological count. We next turn to 
the Archaic calendar for a katun- ending with 13 Ahau 8 Xul, remembering we are supposed 
to have overcome the difference of a day [1. ¢., between 7 Xul and 8 Xul]. We must also keep 
in mind that owing to my rearrangement of the calendar [7. e., his rearrangement of his own 
tables], it will be a date now at the head of a column. 
‘Happily, in support of the correctness of the Xiu chronology, we find it in a reasonable 
position—the 16th katun of the 11th cycle of the 54th great cycle [7. ¢., 11.16.0.0.0]. 
“Assuming that date to have been October 30, 1539 (as the foregoing considerations 
show there is just reason for so doing), we are enabled to aline every other date in the Archaic 
scheme and to fix at least the prosperous period of all the ruined cities. 
“The result shows that Copan, Quirigua, Tikal, Menche, Piedras Negras, and the other 
more modern capitals flourished from the sixth to the ninth century of our era, speaking in 
round terms, and that Palenque was in existence 3,143 years before Christ.’”! 
It must be admitted at the outset that Goodman’s correlation agrees closely 
with that given on page 66 of the Chronicle of Oxkutzcab, in spite of the fact that 
he could have had no knowledge of that manuscript when he proposed his corre- 
lation. Remarkable as this agreement is, it should not be stressed too strongly, 
however, in its favor, since he freely admits he follows Xiu sources, and that the 
Itza, Chel, and Cocom records were different. The pivotal point of his correlation 
is the statement that Katun 13 Ahau 8 Xul ended on October 30, 1539, which 
agrees with page 66 of the Chronicle of Oxkutzcab to this extent, that the latter 
states that Tun 13 Ahau 8 Xul ended in the year 11 Ix, which began in 1539. 
The evidence upon which Goodman based his identification of this katun is 
nothing more than an unwarrantable translation of the passages in III, IV, and 1X 
describing Napot Xiu’s death. He first accepts a passage in I, and enothedt in an 
unnamed Book of Chilan Balam quoted by Brinton (see No. 2, page 495), both of 
which indicate thac 1541 was a year 13 Kan, in which case 1536 could not have been 
4 Kan, but 8 Cauac. He accepts 4 Kan, however, as the year of Napot Xiu’s death 
and next looks for its nearest occurrence to 1536, which he finds as beginning in July 
1545. This he admits was in Katun 11 Ahau, thereby throwing over the only two 
points which the writer believes it is safe to accept in these three entries, first, that 
Napot Xiu died in 1536, and second, that this fell somewhere in Katun 13 Ahau. 
He justifies these emendations of the original sources by mistranslating the passage 
uacp’el haab u binel ma tz’ococ u xocol oxlahun ahau cuchie as “the sixth year will not 
end from the count of the 13 Ahau,” which in Gates’s opinion 1s not the sense of the 
Maya here at all, the meaning probably being that 6 tuns were still lacking before 
the end of Katun 13 Ahau. 
Having previously decided the year of Napot Xiu’s death was 1545, 6 years 
before that brings him to 1539 as the year in which Katun 13 Ahauended. Finally, 


1See Goodman, 1905, p. 646. Goodman evidently believed that the Cycle 1 dates at Palenque were historical 
and that the monuments upon which they are inscribed date from that remote period. There is little doubt, 
however, but that these early dates were mythological or possibly astronomical in nature, and in every case 
Secondary Series bring them down to very much later times, 7. ¢., to the middle of Cycle 9. 
