30 May 2025 / 10 House
Article suitable for older students
Find out moreWhen does a day ‘start’ in the tonalpohualli?
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Marco Amatori: In the Tonalpohualli, when does a day ‘start’? At sunrise, noon, sunset, midnight? I can’t find an anwer anywhere. I read that the Maya count days from sunset/night. [Apparently] In the Florentine Codex, book 6, pt. 7 chap. 36:197, the Mexica counted days of the Tonalpohualli from midnight... Since I can’t read the Codex, I was humbly asking you if it’s true? (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
Actually there’s conflicting evidence on this. The exact text of the Florentine reads:-
’[The soothsayers summoned by the parents to name their child - pic 1] first enquired carefully exactly when the baby was born. If it was perhaps not yet exactly midnight, then they assigned the day to the day sign which had passed. But if he had been born when midnight had passed, they assigned the day to the day sign which followed... If it was born at daybreak, or [when] there was a little sun, or at about that time, its very lot was the day, the day sign, and its companions which governed there.’
However, it appears that the Nahua (Aztec) system was far from universal in Mesoamerica. In his classic study The Book of the Year, Munro S. Edmonson gives two variants:-
• The Mixe people (inhabiting the mountainous region north east of the city of Oaxaca), as well as ‘the natives of Hibueras and Honduras’ count(ed) the days ‘from noon to noon’; in evidence, Edmonson quotes from Antonio de Herrera (a Spanish chronicler writing at the end of the 16th century) who in turn cites documents held in the Archivo de Indias (Seville).
• For the Jacalctec Maya people of Guatemala/Chiapas, ‘the day begins and ends at sunset’.
What’s more, even for the Nahua/Aztecs the sources disagree. According to Alfonso Caso ‘”it seems highly probable that the ancient Mexicans did not compute the day from midnight to midnight, as we do, but from midday to midday...” two sources confirm the idea. The Telleriano-Remensis Codex, fol. 48v., states that “they also count the day from noon of one day until noon on the next” [see pic 3]. The second source, Fray Juan de Córdoba, in reference to the Zapotec Indians of Oaxaca, notes that “they used to count the day from one noon to the next.”’ (Miguel León-Portilla, Time and Reality in the Thought of the Maya, 2nd. ed., 1988 p. 145).
There seems to be no consensus on this. In fact we asked a serious scholar, Prof Tony Aveni, and he wrote saying ‘As far as I know the best answer would be dawn...’ (personal communication, April 2024). So, we’re confused now!
Sources:-
• Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain (Fray Bernardino de Sahagún), Book 6 Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, trans. by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson, School of American Research and University of Utah, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1969
• The Book of the Year: Middle American Calendrical Systems by Munro S. Edmonson, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, 1988.
Picture sources:-
• Images from the Florentine Codex (original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence) scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994
• Pic 3: image scanned from Codex Telleriano-Remensis by Eloise Quiñones Keber, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1995.
Comments (4)
Mauricio
4th May 2025
Itzli, since you haven’t been responding me lately, I had to make my own investigation and found out what the main problem is for your correlation. While there are at least three sources to support that the mexicah started and ended the 24 hour day at noon, there are basically cero sources that claim that it started at sunrise as you claim. Let’s analyze the two sources you provide:
- “at dawn when the sun was rising, the priest again sounded his drum, at the hour when bells ring at daybreak today. With this sound he announced the birth of the day (1570 Duran, Diego Book of the Gods and the Rites, p.197).” (I’m surprised that you are using a post columbian spanish source to support your claim by the way). While this is true, it is also true that the priest had a different sound/rite for letting the people know when it was time to go to bed, so the “day” that Duran is referring to is most probable a working day or a daylight period which in spanish is used interchangeably.
- “Archaeological evidence”: you don’t specify what this evidence is, but, probably same as above, while there are devices and observatories found to be used to watch/determine the sunrise, there are those used to watch/determine the sunset. Does that mean they started the day at sunset?
Not only the sunrise day start lacks evidence, it can also destroy the Ochoa’s correlation main argument, which is the Caso three main correlation dates, since the apparent “leap day” between 1519 and 1521 could just mean a day fell abfore or after noon.
You yourself seem to acknowledge the noon theory with your explanation of the equinox calculation which has noon as a cut off time for defining the equinox.
If you have more evidence than this to support the sunrise start of a 24 hours period, I’ll be happy to know. Meanwhile, you shouldn’t be so harsh with the Caso correlation, one that has a lot of supporting evidence and that have been used by the Maya’s continually since pre columbian times.
Itztli Ehecatl
21st Nov 2022
Diego Duran shared an account in which “at dawn when the sun was rising, the priest again sounded his drum, at the hour when bells ring at daybreak today. With this sound he announced the birth of the day (1570 Duran, Diego Book of the Gods and the Rites, p.197).” [8] This supports the archaeological evidence and also reinforces the idea that the Spaniards contradicted themselves every time they wrote about the calendar.
Mexicolore
Many thanks for sharing this - good info.
Mauricio
24th Sep 2022
Hello. Very interesting, thanks for the article. Although I’m a bit confused now because I have read a couple of sources that claim that the Aztec days started at sunrise. Any ideas for why they say so?
Mexicolore
Afraid not! We’ve done some good basic research on this, but we will try and find out more...
Marco Amatori
12th Mar 2020
Thank you Mexicolore!
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