APPENDIX VII. 
THE HOTUN. 
Probably no single phase of the Maya inscriptions is more noteworthy than 
that of the periodicity of the monuments upon which they are engraved, and cer- 
tainly no other characteristic of the monuments themselves is of greater importance 
in determining their function or the nature of the phenomena which regulated the 
dates of their erection. While this periodicity is not characteristic of the earliest 
Maya monuments, as we shall presently see, it is encountered, nevertheless, far back 
in the Old Empire, and even by the early part of Cycle 9, especially at Copan, it had 
become the controlling factor in the erection of the monuments, and so continued 
down to the very end of the New Empire, more than 13 centuries later.1 The 
writer's attention was first attracted to this phenomenon in 1907 in connection with 
his first work on the Supplementary Series, during the course of which he discovered 
that the monuments at Quirigua were erected at intervals of every 1,800 days. 
Seler had noted this condition at the same city (where it is most apparent) as 
early as 1899,” although when the writer made his discovery he was unaware of 
Seler’s work; and in 1910, Bowditch made this phenomenon the subject of a special 
appendix in his The Numeration, Calendar Systems, and Astronomical Knowledge of 
the Mayas,* in which he reaches the following conclusion: 
“It might be deduced from this table [7. e., a table showing katun, lahuntun, and hotun- 
endings on the monuments] that in early times the Mayas marked the lapse of each katun 
by some kind of stone record, as Bishop Landa and others report, and that, as time ran on, 
they made this record more often, perhaps at the end of each half-katun, and that in still 
later times the record was made at the end of each quarter-katun. But as the early monu- 
ments are probably more defaced than the later ones, and as a large number of monuments 
are found the glyphs of which are too much worn to be identified, and as undoubtedly there 
are many monuments yet to be discovered, it is not at all improbable that the quarter- 
katuns were recorded from the beginning.’”4 



ee) 
Fic. 81.—Glyph for the hotun: a, Piedras Negras, Stela 12; b, Quirigua, Stela C; c, Copan, Stela 1; d, Piedra F 
Negras, Lintel 2; ¢, Piedras Negras, Stela 22; f, Piedras Negras, Stela 36; g, Yaxchilan, Altar 9 | 
h, Quirigua, Stela K; 7, Quirigua, Stela J; 7, Copan, Stela I; k, Piedras Negras, Stela 6; /, Piedras’ 
Negras, Stela 25; m, Quirigua, Stela H; n, Piedras Negras, Stela 16; 0, Yaxchilan, Lintel 3; p, Pie- 
dras Negras, Stela 9; g, Copan, East Altar of Stela 5; r, Quirigua, Zodmorph G; s, Quirigua, 
Stela D. 
1This is under the writer’s correlation of Maya and Christian chronology; under Goodman’s it would only be 
two and a half centuries less, however. (See Appendix II.) 
2Seler, 1899, pp. (670)-(738); republished in Seler, 1902-1908, vol. 1, pp. 712-836. 
3Bowditch, 1910, Appendix VIII, pp. 310-318. 4Tbid., pp. 310-311. 565 

