[Aztlan] EK and CHAY glyphs related?

[Karen Bassie]

I am not an epigrapher but I would like to say something about the 
iconography associated with the eighth day name which was called Lamat 
in Postclassic Yucatec, but Kanil in some of the highland calendars. If 
you look at the illustrations in Thompson's Hieroglyphic Writing for the 
Lamat sign (T510) (fig. 7:59-61) and for the patron for the month Yax 
which is also T510 (fig. 22:50-59), it is obvious that most of the full 
figure forms are the Milky Way crocodile (aka the Cosmic Monster). The 
"star" sign is found in the eye of the beast.
If you download Dave Stuart's paper at 
http://www.mesoweb.com/stuart/notes/Throne.pdf, you will see an example 
of the crocodile's eye and lid on a Palenque throne. There is a lovely 
picture of a crocodile's eye at  
http://rodgab.groups.vox.com/library/photo/6a00c2251d8df0604a00d4144279cc6a47.html 
that shows that the "fringed" lid of the Lamat sign (Thompson fig. 7:61) 
actually looks a lot like the upper edge of the crocodile's eyelid. This 
fringed lid also has a form similar to the edge of the stylized 
waterlily sign (T501). The mouth of the Milky Way crocodile is the black 
rift of the Milky Way as illustrated in Maya Cosmos. So if you compare 
the Milky Way crocodile to the Milky Way, the bright star Deneb marks 
where the eye of the monster would be. Even on a bright night when the 
Milky Way is not readily visible, you can still find the rift by zeroing 
in on this prominent star.
The Maya associate the black rift section of the Milky Way with the 
rains, and this section of the Milky Way dominates the night sky at the 
beginning of the rainy season. Classic Period imagery frequently shows 
water pouring from the mouth of the Milky Way crocodile. In the flood 
scene on Dresden Codex page 74, the water that destroys the world is 
pouring from the mouth of the Milky Way crocodile (as well as the water 
jug of the creator grandmother Chak Chel). So the Milky Way crocodile 
can bring both beneficial rain for growing crops and destructive rain 
that floods everything. In the Maya area, the big destruction is the 
wind and flooding from tropical storms. During the next dry season, the 
damaged and flattened vegetation dries out and can turn into a raging 
wild fire by a single thunderbolt. It is a double whammy of destruction.
The use of the star sign in the haykab' sign may be based on a 
completely different value for the sign, but certainly the star eye of 
the Milky Way crocodile had a destructive association.