"We
found a great number of books and since they contained nothing but
superstitions
and falsehoods of the devil we burned them, which they took most
grievously,
and which gave them great pain."
(Friar Diego de Landa, 1566)
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Only four Maya glyph books, called codices, survive. They are painted on lime-whitened bark paper, folded accordion-style. The codices were likely produced in the late post-Classical period (1200-1519 AD). Some material in the codices , including astronomical tables, appears to have been copied or adapted from manuscripts of the Classical period (200 - 900 AD). The long count entry date of the Dresden Codex eclipse table, for example, correlates to 755 AD. This may date the original version of the table. |
Unlike the Classical inscriptions, which are mainly concerned with events in the lives of kings, the codices are what Bruce Love has called "priest's handbooks." They are filled with information needed to time rituals and make auguries. Astronomical tables are an important part of at least three of the surviving codices. The codices also include pages devoted to new year rituals, and almanacs that follow the sacred round of the 260-day tzolk'in. There is accumulating evidence that astronomical information and cross- references to the astronomical tables are hidden in these as well. |
Dresden Codex Eclipse Table |
The
most
complete and best understood of the the glyph books is the Dresden
Codex. Despite
recent discoveries about astronomy in the inscriptions, it remains our
most important source of information about Maya astronomy.
The Dresden Codex includes:
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The earliest edition of the Codex was not Forstemann's, but a tracing made for Lord Kingbourogh's Antiquities of Mexico (1830). This reproduction is quite pretty, and preserves some details lost due to later damage to the original. A scan can be downloaded at FAMSI.
The
best print edition, a recoloured version of Forstemann's, is contained
in Thompson's Commentary on the Dresden Codex (1972). A
small-scale
scan of selected pages is on-line.
An
edition based on new photographs of the original was issued in
1975.
However, damage to the original in World War II reduces the usefulness
of this edition. See selected pages
on-line. The Villacorta edition (1930), is a
black-and-white
redrawing, recently re-issued as an inexpensive reprint by
Aegean
Park Press. It is still used by scholars because of its
clarity.
See the Pomona
College web site for a colourized, interactive version
of the Villacorta Venus pages.
Grolier Codex fragments |
Venus astronomy was particularly important throughout Mesoamerica. According to the Manuscript of Serna, a missionary report from Central Mexico, the natives "adored and made more sacrifices" to Venus than any other "celestial or terrestrial creatures" apart from the sun. The Grolier Codex, a recently discovered but badly damaged Maya codex, is a fragmentary Venus table. It appears to be simpler in structure than the Dresden Codex Venus table, and resembles what are thought to be Venus tables in the central Mexican Borgia Group Codices. |
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The third Maya codex
that unequivocally
contains an astronomical table is the Paris
Codex. This
incomplete document includes what appears to be a Maya zodiac.
Fantastic
animals representing constellations along the sun's path about the sky
hang from a "sky band", which represents the ecliptic in Classical
inscriptions
and the codices.
The Codex illustrates thirteen constellations along the ecliptic (one more than the twelve in the Old World zodiac). The constellations are apparently not illustrated in the order they appear in the heavens. Instead, each illustration is separated from the next by a count of 168 days. Although most scholars
identify
these pages in the Codex as a zodiac, some are not
convinced.
They agree that the Codex likely depicts constellations, but
argue
that the Maya did not conceive a "zodiac" in the Old World sense.
View the full Paris Zodiac and an attempt to identify the constellations |
The Madrid Codex is perhaps the least understood of the surviving glyph books. It may have been produced after the conquest in Tayasal, a Maya kingdom that retained its independence until the end of the 17th C.
Madrid Codex p.14. |
No
astronomical tables have been identified with certainty in the Madrid,
but there is astronomical symbolism. Skybands and what are likely
zodiac
and eclipse symbols appear in many illustrations. Pages 12-18 contain a
long tzolk'in almanac with celestial serpents twining through
it.
(Serpents are often sky symbols. Chan means both "sky" and
"snake").
This almanac has long been thought to have to do with agricultural
seasons.
Harvey and Victoria Bricker have recently suggested that it is an
eclipse
table. Right:
Turtle (ak) and "3 stones of creation" (Gemini/Orion?)
hang
from sun signs and sky band (heliacal rise?) (from Madrid Codex
p.71). |
Please Note that the discussions of the astronomical tables in the Dresden Codex are more technical than most other material on this web site. They are intended to be reasonably full summaries of the current state of scholarly knowledge about astronomy in the Codex. |
THE REAL MAYA PROPHECIES: ASTRONOMY IN THE
INSCRIPTIONS AND CODICES