Page:Mexican Archæology.djvu/93

Rh days were associated with certain deities, such as 4. olin and 12. itzcuintli with the sun, 5. itzcuintli and 6. quetzpalin with Mictlantecutli, but for a list of these the reader may be referred to Sahagun. Apart from the signs of the days themselves, the presiding deities of the weeks, and the gods of the individual dates, the numerical signs also possessed a lucky or unlucky connotation. Three and four were good numbers, five and six generally bad, seven always good, eight and nine bad, ten, eleven, twelve and thirteen good. Consequently the diviner was obliged to take into account all these possible influences, which in many cases might be contradictory, in considering the fortune attached to a particular day. In some MSS. the tonalamatl is arranged on a different system, viz. in five long horizontal rows of fifty-two days each. Each row, and each vertical column of five days, is provided with a presiding deity or symbol, the influence of which must be assessed. Nor have we yet come to an end of the factors which must be taken into consideration, but before proceeding it will be necessary to explain the solar calendar.

The Mexicans reckoned 365 days to the solar year, which they divided into eighteen months of twenty days each, and a nineteenth period of five days, considered extremely unlucky, at the end of the year. As the days were known by their tonalamatl names, it is obvious that the first 115 days of the year recurred at the end. But it was possible to distinguish between two days of the same name which fell in the same year, owing to the fact that each day was associated with one of a series of nine deities, called "lords of the night," a series also repeated ad infinitum, save that no "lord" was assigned to any of the five unlucky days at the end of the year, which were called nemontemi or "useless days." Thus, since the number 260 is not divisible by Q, 1t was possible to differentiate between two days of