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Tzolkin

Also Known As Tzolk'in The spelling that follows the modern Maya orthography. · Sacred Round The usual English rendering of the count. · The Sacred Round · The 260 Day Count
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The Tzolkin is the Maya sacred count of 260 days, made by running twenty named day signs against the numbers one to thirteen so that a pairing returns only after 260 days. It carries no year and no era of its own: it is a perpetual round used to time ritual, to divine, and to name a person after the day they were born on. Meshed with the 365 day Haab it produces the Calendar Round of fifty two years, and it is the count the Long Count dates are pinned to. Day keepers in the Guatemalan highlands still run it, in a sequence continuous with the ancient one.

Facts
Attributions
Epoch
Carries no epoch year and no era of its own. It is a perpetual 260 day round used to time ritual and divination rather than a count of years, though Long Count dates are pinned to a position within it. 1
Year Length
None. The Tzolkin is a perpetual 260 day count with no year and no era of its own, meshed with the 365 day Haab to produce the fifty two year Calendar Round 1
Calendar Type
Cyclical: a perpetual round with no year and no era of its own 1
Associated Religion
Maya religion 1
Origins
Historical Origin
The oldest and most widespread Mesoamerican calendar, its 260 day count shared in equivalent form across many cultures, known among the Aztec as the tonalpohualli. 1
Place of Origin
Mesoamerica 1
Origin of the Name
Tzolkin, meaning count of days in Yucatec Mayan, is a modern scholarly label rather than the name Classic Maya scribes themselves used for the cycle. 2
Structure
Structure
Twenty named day signs run against the numbers one to thirteen, so a given pairing returns only after 260 days, which is the least common multiple of the two counts. There are no months in it and no year above it. 1
Reckoning
Repeating Cycle
260 1
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 3
Learn More
Twenty Signs Against Thirteen Numbers

The mechanism is a pair of wheels of different sizes turning together. Twenty named day signs run in fixed order, and a number from one to thirteen runs alongside them, both advancing by one each day. Because thirteen and twenty share no factor, a given pairing of number and sign does not return until both cycles have completed a whole number of turns, which takes two hundred and sixty days. Every day in that span carries a unique name, and after it the sequence begins again exactly. That structure has no astronomical anchor and needs none.

The count is not tied to a sunrise, a season or a year, and it has run continuously without intercalation or correction for as long as it can be traced, which is what allows it to be meshed with other counts without ever needing adjustment. Why two hundred and sixty is unsettled and has been argued for over a century. Proposals include the approximate length of human gestation, the interval between the two days each year on which the sun stands directly overhead at certain latitudes in Mesoamerica, the growing season for maize, and the simple product of two numbers that already carried significance. None has become the accepted answer, and the atlas records the question as open rather than choosing among them.

A Count That Was Never Interrupted

The remarkable thing about this cycle is that it is still being kept. Day keepers in the Guatemalan highlands, among them K'iche', Mam and Ixil communities, maintain the count, mark its days, and are consulted about them, and the sequence they keep can be checked against dates recorded in colonial documents and back through those to the ancient inscriptions. The line is unbroken across the conquest, the colonial period and the twentieth century. The count's uses are personal as much as ceremonial.

A person may be named for the day they were born on and understood to carry something of its character; days are chosen or avoided for particular undertakings; and the office of day keeper is entered through a training and a calling rather than assumed. Anthropological work in the highlands has described the practice in detail, including its transmission and the reasoning day keepers themselves give for it. That living practice was largely absent from the international discussion of Maya calendars around the turn of the millennium, which concerned a different count and a terminal date that this cycle does not have. The atlas records the two separately, and notes that the communities keeping the count were not the ones making the predictions.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Commonly Conflated with (See Note)

The 260-day Tzolkin harmonic, Dreamspell Kins

The Dreamspell fixes its own correlation to the Gregorian year and drops a day every leap year, so it does not track the count kept in Maya communities. The two agree on the number 260 and on nothing else.

Contains

Ahau, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Akbal, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Ben, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Caban, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Cauac, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Chicchan, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Chuen, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Cib, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Cimi, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Cosmic, Tzolkin Tones

One of the thirteen numbers the count runs against the twenty day signs.

Crystal, Tzolkin Tones

One of the thirteen numbers the count runs against the twenty day signs.

Eb, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Electric, Tzolkin Tones

One of the thirteen numbers the count runs against the twenty day signs.

Etznab, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Galactic, Tzolkin Tones

One of the thirteen numbers the count runs against the twenty day signs.

Ik, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Imix, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Ix, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Kan, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Lamat, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Lunar, Tzolkin Tones

One of the thirteen numbers the count runs against the twenty day signs.

Magnetic, Tzolkin Tones

One of the thirteen numbers the count runs against the twenty day signs.

Manik, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Men, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Muluc, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Oc, Tzolkin Day Signs

One of the twenty day signs the count runs against the thirteen numbers.

Overtone, Tzolkin Tones

One of the thirteen numbers the count runs against the twenty day signs.

Planetary, Tzolkin Tones

One of the thirteen numbers the count runs against the twenty day signs.

Resonant, Tzolkin Tones

One of the thirteen numbers the count runs against the twenty day signs.

Rhythmic, Tzolkin Tones

One of the thirteen numbers the count runs against the twenty day signs.

Self-Existing, Tzolkin Tones

One of the thirteen numbers the count runs against the twenty day signs.

Solar, Tzolkin Tones

One of the thirteen numbers the count runs against the twenty day signs.

Spectral, Tzolkin Tones

One of the thirteen numbers the count runs against the twenty day signs.

Held Differently

Dreamspell (overview), Dreamspell Kins

Echoes the 260-day count of the traditional Tzolkin but uses a different day-count, a fixed correlation and a leap-day rule the authentic Tzolkin does not have.

Source Dreamspell: The Journey of Timeship Earth 2013Jose Arguelles
Galactic Signature (personal kin), Dreamspell Kins

A Galactic Signature is generated the same way the Dreamspell overview itself is, echoing but not matching the traditional Tzolkin day-sign count.

Source Dreamspell: The Journey of Timeship Earth 2013Jose Arguelles

Derived from This

The 260-day Tzolkin harmonic, Dreamspell Kins

The Dreamspell of Jose Arguelles builds its 260 kin on the Maya count, thirteen tones against twenty seals.

Originates in Language

Classic Maya, Languages

The language in which the count's own terminology is framed. The communities that keep it work in many Mayan languages.

Part Of

Maya Calendar Round, Calendars

The 260 day half of the Calendar Round, which is the Tzolkin meshed with the 365 day Haab.

Related To

Aztec Tonalpohualli, Calendars

The Aztec Tonalpohualli is the same 260 day divinatory count under other day names, shared across Mesoamerica.

Haab, Calendars

The two counts interlock to produce the Calendar Round: a given pairing of Haab and Tzolkin dates repeats only once every fifty two years.

Maya Long Count, Calendars

Long Count dates in the inscriptions are given together with the Tzolkin and Haab positions they fall on.

Sources
1. The Maya (9th edition)
Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston, Thames and Hudson, 2015View the Source
2. Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction
J. Eric S. Thompson, University of Oklahoma Press, 1962View the Source
3. Time and the Highland Maya
Barbara Tedlock, University of New Mexico Press (revised edition), 1992
Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico
Anthony F. Aveni, University of Texas Press, 1980
The Book of the Year: Middle American Calendrical Systems
Munro S. Edmonson, University of Utah Press, 1988
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The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.