next page

previous page

table of contents

home

Although the period for Venus as Morning star was equal in length to the period for Venus as Evening star, viz. ca 263 days, the Mayas had adjusted these periods in order to fit with a structure incorporating also other cycles, first of all the synodic cycle of the Moon:

... The Mayas feared Venus. I guess she dominated time too much for comfort. It is extraordinary how her behaviour evidently is ruling events.

'After five complete cycles totaling 2,920 days, the movement of Venus fill eight idealized years of 365 days each and come within hours of spanning 99 lunations.' (Popol Vuh)

8 * 365 = 5 * 584 = 2920 days, and 99 * 29.5 = 2920½. Thus 5 Venus cycles are joined to 8 Earth years in a way similar to how 7 'Sun flames' are joined to 6 'Moon flames'.

And 99 Moon cycles are also joined to 5 Venus cycles (and to 8 Earth years):

The Mayas must have manipulated the data of their factual observations of Venus in order to accomplish a coordination in their calendar between the morning star period (263 nights) and 8 lunar months (236 nights):

'The Maya and later the Central Mexicans divided the motion of Venus into four intervals. They assigned an 8-day period to the disappearance at inferior conjunction [when Venus is between sun and Earth], which is close to that observed today. But, peculiarly, Maya manuscripts recorded a disappearance interval of 90 days at superior conjunction [when Venus is behind the sun], nearly double the true value. Furthermore, they assigned unequal values to the intervals as morning and evening star: 250 and 236 days, respectively. [This must be an error as 250 days refers to evening star and 236 refers to morning star.] In fact, the true intervals are equivalent at approximately 263 days. These curious intervals betray a lunar origin: the latter three are whole or half multiples of the lunar synodic month: 

In practice this means that if, for example, a first-quarter moon was visible at a morning heliacal [first appearance after having been invisible due to being close to, behind of or in front of the sun] rise of Venus, then the moon's phase, on average, would be the same on the last day that morning star Venus was seen in the east. When Venus reappeared as the evening star in the west, the moon would appear in the opposite phase (last quarter).' (Skywatchers)

The G text was obviously designed in order to fit with counting time according to lunar synodic months.

... From this we can in G and glyph number 236 recognize the last day of 'the morning star' ('the front side'):

8 'feathers' at left and 8 at right will together be 16 and 16 * 29.5 = twice 236.

I ended my earlier discussion, quoted above, by suggesting a possible structure for the G text:

Notably the number of glyphs on the C tablet (740) equals 2 * (290 + 50) = 2 * (250 + 90). This suggests the C text might have been intended to describe the situation south of the equator - because the northern spring ('morning Sun') should have corresponded to Venus as Morning star. 584 - 340 = 244 = 8 + 236.

What constellation could possibly Te Huki be? Gb1-5 is similar to Cb1-14:

huki	Gb1-5	Cb1-14

So far my Polynesian word list has only the following to say about huki: