[Aztlan] Yucatec /tzul/, Venus, and dog

[ECOLING at aol.com]

Martha Noyes & others:

Where is this quotation from?

<<
"[At the time of] eclipse of the  Sun, eclipse of  the Moon. 
Ah Tzul Ahaw, the Venus Dog Lord, descends."  (from the Dresden Codex)
>>

That is probably a glossing of parts of the text from the last segment
of the Dresden Venus table.   
The "Venus Dog Lord" is an *interpretation* and *selection*
from the meanings of /tzul/, and thus not necessarily a correct 
interpretation.
The only thing actually in that text, reflected here, is /Ah Tzul Ahaw/.
The two glyphs rendered above as "eclipse of the Sun, eclipse of the Moon"
may together simply be a glyph for "conjunction" (without necessarily
specifying the bodies in conjunction, though on this date "eclipse"
was presumably at least partly intended -- Venus was also in 
conjunction with the Sun).   My publication _Planetary Tables in the
Dresden Codex of the Maya_ second edition available shortly,
discusses such a re-evaluation of the so-called "eclipse" glyphs as 
"conjunction".


The connection of Venus with "dog" is probably at least that the
root /tzul/ in Yucatec has the three meanings (listed in Cordemex dictionary) 

'to set in order' (probably as applied to Venus's synodic cycle, 
                             recurring after 5 of them),
'spine'    (one glyph derives from a representation of spine and ribs)
'dog'   (mestizo dog)

Some have speculated that the 'dog' connection is there for the
same reason that a dog guards the approaches to the underworld
in Eurasia (Greek etc.), namely that dogs hang around the grave
of a master for a long time.   That may or may not be a correct
explanation in this case.

Best wishes,
Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics


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