[Aztlan] 819-day count

[Robert Hall]

Colega Baert Georges,
  
The 819-day count is commonly thought to have only had some mystical use, which it probably could have had during the Classic period of Maya history when the few recorded stations of the count are found. The 819-day count would, however, have been of very practical value in the early history, i.e. the presumptive but elusive pre-Long Count history of the calendar, as far as such a calendar can be reconstructed. The 819-day count combines elegantly with both the 364-day year and with the 7182-day canonical Jupiter-Saturn conjunction period, i.e periods of 19 x 378 or 18 x 399 days. This would explain not only the peculiarity that each station of the 819-day count was associated with a different directional color but also the origin of the 13-katun cycle. 
  
The 364-day year divides into four quarters or seasons of 91 days each. Each quarter divides into seven trecenas, i.e. 7 x 13 = 91 and 28 x 13 = 364. The 364-day year goes into 819 days twice with a remainder of 91 days or one quarter of a year. This means that each 819-day count begins with the first day of a different season of the year for four years, after which the cycle repeats. Because there is a mental association between the quarters of the year and the quarters of the earth, this means that each 819-day count begins with a different directional color.
  
A count of 819 days goes evenly into a round of 13 counts of 7182 days. Only each thirteenth 7182-day count can begin with a station of the 819-day count. This is a logical origin for the idea of rounds of 13 katuns of 7200 days in the later history of the Maya calendar. Unfortunately there is no 7200-day katun that has ever begun on the day of a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction. Is there a station of the 819-day count that coincides with a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction? Yes. That would be on February 11, 2091 B.C., which is 1 Imix 9 Zip in the Classic Maya calendar and 1 Imix 8 Zip in the Post-Classic Mayapan calendar. There was probably no priest-astronomer around to make that observation in 2091 B.C., but what priest-astronomer was around to observe a zenith passage of the sun on August 11, 3114 B.C.?
  
Eric Thompson’s base date for the 819-day count was 1 Caban 5 Cumku, August 8, 3114 B.C. If one moves forward precisely four rounds of thirteen proto-katuns of 7182 days each, one arrives at 1 Imix 9 Zip, February 11, 2091 B.C. I have argued that the 3114 B.C. base date of the Long Count was retrofitted from an earlier, presumably Olmec, base date of 2091 B.C. and that the creation story of the inscriptions was contrived to fit the base of the Long Count when the Long Count was inaugurated at its exact midpoint on 6.10.0.0.1 in 551 B.C. The Long Count era base of 4 Ahau 8 Cumku, August 11, 3114 B.C., has been associated on the inscriptions with the first of two events in a Maya creation story. As it turns out, Bishop Landa observed the Yucatecs erecting a large pole (read World Tree?) on a haab anniversary of the day February 11, 2091 B.C., 9 Zip (Classic = 8 Zip Mayapan). This was a haab anniversary, not a calendar round anniversary or a tropical year anniversary.
  
It has been argued that the 819-day count was a Classic period Maya creation. It can also be effectively argued, however, that the 819-day count, as known in the Classic period from inscriptions, was already in existence in the Late Pre-Classic in a form adapted to the 365-day year after that year was instituted. The date of 8.6.2.4.17 (=8 Caban 0 Kankin, March 13, 162 A.D., gregorian), on the Tuxtla statuette fell exactly 4 x 365 x 819 days after the first-ever spring zenith passage of the sun of the Maya era at the latitude of the location of discovery of the statuette at San Andres Tuxtla, Veracruz, Mexico, i.e 0.0.0.13.17, 8 Caban 0 Kankin, May 14, 3113 B.C. This was the first time in Maya history that the calendar round day of 8 Caban 0 Kankin would ever fall an even number of 819-day counts after the occurrence of this day in 3113 B.C.
  
Days that are actual stations of the 819-day count always fall on a day with a coefficient of "1". This does not mean that the count cannot enter into calculations merely as an interval of time. In a classic exposition of this principle Floyd Lounsbury showed that the birth of the primal ancestress, the mother of the Palenque Triad, was contrived by Palenque astrologers to fall shortly before the 4 Ahau 8 Cumku base date of the Maya era and 1,359,540 days before the birthday of Lord Pacal. This figure factors into 1,734 triple sacred almanacs and into 1,660 counts of 819 days. It placed Lord Pacal’s birth in A.D. 603 on the same day of the almanac as that of the ancestress and in the same relationship to stations of the 819-day count, though not on an actual station of the count. Pacal’s birthday was 8 Ahau and followed by twenty days the nearest station of that count.
  
Much of what I have said above is available in my 1998 paper "A comparison of some North American and Mesoamerican cosmologies and their ritual expressions" in the book Explorations in American Archaeology: Essays in Honor of Wesley R. Hurt, editor Mark G. Plew, pp. 55–88 (University Press of America, Lanham, Md.). Unfortunately the nearest libraries to you that contains this book are at the Universities of Groningen and Leiden in the Netherlands and at Cambridge University in England. I will gladly send you a copy if you send me your postal address offline.
  
What I have said relating to the Tuxtla statuette can be found on pp. 134-136 of my book An Archaeology of the Soul: North American Indian Belief and Ritual (University of Illinois Press, 1997) and in an article "Algunas consecuencias de las asociaciones astronomicas de las fechas de cuenta larga de la Estela 1 de La Mojarra y de la Estatuilla de Tuxtla" in La Palabra y el Hombre [Revista de la Universidad Veracruzana] No. 80, pp. 9-18, October-December. Xalapa, Ver., Mexico. I will also be happy to send you the relevant pages from these sources.
  
I hope this helps. Bob Hall