TRANSLATIONS
Let us now return to the glyphs at the end / beginning of the year (or other similarly structured period). The week provides a stable foundation to build on. Given that the 8 drums illustrate a week they may illustrate also a year. The first little drum at the beginning is the last big one at the end, in the same way as Quetzalcoatl (sun) equals Tezcatlipoca (his shadow), or as Hotu Matua equals Oroi. That is what I think. The different names and characters just illustrate different developmental stages. The little drum resembles the right leg in Hb9-52:
Saturday is the beginning of the week (in spite of Sunday appearing as the first day among the 7). Saturn is black, like Tezcatlipoca and Oroi, and he represents also the last phase of the old period. Maybe we here have the explanation of why black comes before white. The black is the fertile mother earth and white is the late grownup stage where nothing changes any more. Where white ends the long black tail presumably is beginning. We have seen that the text of Tahua is divided into two main parts, the great sequence from Ab7-26 up to and including Aa8-26 (redmarked below) flanked by a lesser sequence beginning after Aa8-26 and ending before Ab7-26:
The lesser sequence (black marked above) is in turn divided in the glyphs from Ab1-1 and up to (but not including) Ab7-26 and the glyphs after Aa8-26 and up to (but not including Ab1-1). I have guessed that the great sequence (red) describes the path of the sun, while the rest (belonging to the moon) is divided in two parts with Ab1-1 marking a point equivalent with the little drum - the glyph is not as big as the rest. If 8 is the real number of the week, then 29 should be the real number of the month. Beginning with Sunday on the 1st of the calendar month, we reach Sundays on the 8th, the 15th, the 22nd and the 29th days of the month. A month calendar, however, does not stretch further than 4 * 7 = 28 nights, and therefore next month will also begin with a Sunday. The real month begins one day before the calendar month, because Sunday is placed as the 1st day in the calendar, and we know now that Saturday (the 28th of the preceding calendar month) is the end and beginning of the real month. It is not the week which has 8 days, it is the month which has 29 days. Only the 1st of the 4 weeks in a month has 8 days. The real month (as observed by the advancing phases of the moon) has 29 ½ nights, but 29 is a close approximation. Only 28 of those nights have a visible moon, and in harmony with the 4 cardinal points of the earth (which is close to the moon) there is measured out 4 cardinal points for the moon too, by way of 4 weeks containing 7 nights each. Instead of counting with 26 * 29 (red) and 20 * 29 (black), we should count with a calendar period of 26 * 28 = 728 nights respective with a calendar period of 20 * 28 = 560 nights. 560 equals 4 * 140. We remember the Aztec calendar (as I have interpreted it):
If each Aztec day corresponds to 2 glyphs, then 140 + 140 = 280 equals 560 glyphs. 84 days for 'midsummer' equals 168 glyphs = 6 * 28, i.e. there remains 7 * 28 = 196 glyphs for the moon. 168 + 196 = 364. 196 / 168 = 7 / 6, the relation between darkness and light. Mysteriously, though, 84 days equals only 3 / 13 of the 364 nights of the year. We have to multiply 84 by 2 to get 168 nights. The problem does not disappear by that operation, because we should multiply also 140 + 140 by 2. That gives 560 nights for the moon. 168 + 560 = 728 = 26 * 28. The relation between sun and moon still remains 3 / 13. 84 Aztec days = 168 glyphs = 6 * 28 (sun) 280 Aztec days = 560 glyphs = 20 * 28 (moon) In Tahua we can count 26 * 14 (instead of 26 * 28) and thereby reach 364, respectively 20 * 14 (instead of 20 * 28) and thereby reach 280 (which equals 140 + 140 in the Aztec calendar - according to my interpretation of the skirt of Chalchiuhtlicue). The presumed relation between sun and moon then becomes 13 / 10. Possibly this means that the 3 missing 28-night months for the moon are those 6 Aztec fortnights at midsummer according to what I see in the skirt:
...the great high priest and monarch of the Golden Age in the Toltec city of Tula, the City of the Sun, in ancient Mexico, whose name, Quetzalcoatl, has been read to mean both 'the Feathered Serpent' and 'the Admirable Twin', and who was fair of face and white of beard, was the teacher of the arts to the people of pre-Columbian America, originator of the calendar, and their giver of maize. His virgin mother, Chimalman - the legend tells - had been one of the three sisters to whom God, the All-Father, had appeared one day under his form of Citlallatonac, 'the morning'. The other two had been struck by fright, but upon Chimalman God breathed and she conceived. She died, however, giving birth, and is now in heaven, where she is revered under the honourable name of 'the Precious Stone of Sacrifice', Chalchihuitzli ... Chalchihuitzli = Chalchiuhtlicue, I believe. ... In Aztec mythology, Chalchiuhtlicue (also Chalciuhtlicue, or Chalcihuitlicue) ('She of the Jade Skirt') was the goddess of lakes and streams. She is also a patroness of birth and plays a part in Aztec baptisms. In the myth of the five suns, she had dominion over the fourth world, which was destroyed in a great flood ... 84 Aztec days, we can calculate in the 'currency' of Tahua, means 6 fortnights and (presumably) 6 * 14 * 29 / 28 = 87 glyphs. Though, we do not know if the pattern from the distance between viri glyphs continues down into the subperiods (subsequences of glyphs), so that 29 glyphs correspond to 2 fortnights everywhere in the text. What will happen when the divergence between 4 * 7 = 28 (a calendar month) and the real moon (with 29 ½ nights) as observed in the sky becomes obvious? If we use a 28-night calendar month from the beginning of the year until 'midsummer' (according to the Aztecs) we have 5 months, which results in 5 * 28 = 140 nights, whereas the journey of the moon has taken her 5 * 29 ½ = 147 ½ nights, or more than 7 nights (more than a week) ahead of the calendar. At that time an adjustment is needed and presumably takes place, which would explain why 140 nights is a separate unit. Presumably the moon calendar was created earlier than the sun calendar, which would explain why the calendar of the solar year had 10 (and not 12) months. 10 would be a natural choice, not only by reason of 10 fingers but also by reason of 10 fortnights being the maximum 'ruler' in the moon calendar. One 'moon ruler' with 10 fortnights in the 1st half-year and one in the 2nd half-year would be a balanced calendar. Between the two half-years some sort of upheaval must take place. Aa4-72 has earlier told us something similar:
Are 18 days added to the belated calendar? Or should we divide 18 by 2 because 2 glyphs correspond to 1 day? The addition of 18 glyphs is located 482 glyphs away from Ab7-26, perhaps meaning 482 / 2 = 241 days away, or about 8 months. The difference between 29 ½ and 29 must have grown from an assumed zero at Ab7-26 to 8 * ½ = 4 days during 8 months. These 8 months may explain why Aa4-72 is located 8 glyphs beyond the π glyph (Aa4-64):
... 8 * 36 = 4 * 72 (as in Aa4-72). Cfr 5 * 72 = 360. 314 - 288 (= 8 * 36) = 26... I think we from this are able to draw the tentative conclusion that the creator of Tahua was aware of the need for an adjustment after 8 calendar months, because the difference between 29 and 29 ½ had reached 4 nights. Maybe 288 means 28 times 8 (instead of 8 * 36). 288 is related to the fact that after 288 glyphs (counted from the beginning of side a) we arrive at Aa4-38, one of the 7 great henua in Tahua:
Observe that 288 is counted from Aa1-1, not from Ab7-26. The distance from Ab7-26 up to and including Aa1-1 is 84 - 25 + 84 + 1 = 144 glyphs:
The numbers suggest that we must count 288 from Aa1-2 and up to and including Aa4-38, because that makes 3 * 122 (= 432) glyphs from Ab7-26 up to and including Aa4-38. 432 = 16 * 27, i .e. 122 = 16 * 9. But 4 * 36 also equals 122, i.e. 12 * 36 = 432. |