The Maya calendar and the ‘burden of time’

This image has become iconic of the ancient Maya. It’s been attributed to, or in the style of, Jean Charlot, a French/American painter, illustrator and muralist who spent many years working and studying in Mexico - and depicted many human load carriers in different contexts. It clearly shows calendar elements, but what exactly, who is in the middle and what is he carrying?
The circle of glyphs form the 19 ‘months’ of the haab’ or solar calendar of the Maya. The 18 primary months all consist of 20 days, with a short final period of just 5 (unlucky) days - making 365 in total. The last five days in the solar year - called uayeb or wayeb by the Maya and nemontemi by the Aztecs - were considered dangerous days (safer to stay at home!) as they didn’t fit in to the normal ‘count’ of days. Unusually the illustrator here has drawn the 18 month glyphs in a clockwise sequence, starting with Pop, the first month. We’ve indicated first and last ‘months’ in pic 1.

Pic 1: The cycle of 18 ‘months’, followed by the 5-day unlucky period at the end of the Maya ‘haab’’ calendar

This is best explained in the words of the pioneering English Mayanist J. Eric S. Thompson, who wrote, back in 1960, ‘The Maya conceived of the divisions of time as burdens which were carried through all eternity by relays of bearers... [not] the journey of one bearer and his load, but of many bearers, each with his own division of time on his back.’ We can see these shown clearly in the series of calendar glyphs from Stela D at the Maya site of Copán in Honduras (see pic 3, left). These glyphs are unusual as they use ‘full-figure’ pictures: the Maya showed both numbers and units of time in two ways, either as (abstract) number signs (such as bars and dots) or, as here, as ‘portraits’. They’re not people at all but deities, actually PAIRS of deities, and each carries on his back a calendar god sign - not of a day, month or year, but of a large group of years, part of a ‘Long Count’ (a period of thousands of years). So each of the figures at Copán is in fact a PAIRING of a number god with a time-period patron god. Complicated!

Pic 3: Group of ‘Initial Series’ or ‘Long Count’ calendar glyphs from Stela D at Copan (L), with the one at bottom right (no. 9) enlarged (R)

Picture sources:-
• Main picture & pic 1: hand drawn illustration on fig tree bark paper, private collection; photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Pic 2: glyph from Wikipedia (Ajaw)
• Pic 3: illustration (L) scanned from The World of the Ancient Maya by John S. Henderson, Orbis Publishing, London, 1981, p. 82; illustration (R) scanned from Maya Designs by Wilson G. Turner, Dover Publications, New York, 1980, p.13
• Pic 4 (centre): photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore.

Info sources/notes:-
• Henderson (above) notes that for the Maya ‘time is not so much a force in its own right as a series of burdens moved through the universe by the gods’
• An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs by Sylvanus G. Morley, Dover Publications, New York, 1975 (original 1915) (Morley shows a tenth Long Count number/period glyph where we’ve left a space - pic 3)
• The quotes from Thompson come from Maya Political Science: Time, Astronomy and the Cosmos by Prudence M. Rice, University of Texas Press, 2004.

Pic 5: Classic symbols for the Maya month sign ‘Pax’ (see Comments section below...)