Page:The Katunes of Maya History.djvu/48

40 within the 8th, 6th, 4th, 2d and 13th Ahan, they indeed do not appear in the wished for sequence. But the sequence, as will be shown, can be established without making interpolations. It will be noticed that in section 2 the 4th Ahau is not mentioned. After having quoted the 8th and 6th Ahau, the author passes over this 4th Ahau and mentions the arrival of Ajraekat, belonging to the family of the renowned Tntul Xiu, who seems to have led in the conquests of Bacalar and Chichen-Itza, which are recorded in section 3, as happening in the 4th, 2d and 13th Ahau. That these conquests must be counted into the epoch mentioned with the names Stb, 6th, 4th, 2d and 13th Ahau is clearly expressed by the words, "in this time," so that no mistake can take place as to the intimate connection with the arrival of Ajmekat. We learn moreover that the time which the conquerors remained in the province of Chacnouitan is said to have been 99 years. These 99 or 100 years cover exactly the time represented by the above five Ahaues, and when reading at the end of the 3d paragraph that they had ruled 60 years in Ziyan-caan Bacalar, it becomes clear that these 60 years are not years that follow the 99 years, but that they were the last years of the 99 mentioned. The two sections supplement each other, and from them the following impression is conveyed, that Chacnouitan was the territory situated southwest of the shores of the great lagoon of Bacalar, The wanderers had been waiting during eleven Ahaues, from the 13th to the 4th Ahan, before they made an attack against the possessors of Bacalar, An attempt to take it appears to have been made during the 8th, 6th and 4th Ahaues, and only accomplished in the 2d Ahau, through the arrival or help of Ajmekat, who led them further on to the discovery or conquest of Chichen-Itza, in the 13th Ahau.

The difficulty of interpreting the two sections is removed as soon as we view them in the light of the reasons given, not as two distinct epochs of which the one follows the other,