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WHITECROW BORDERLAND
Mayan Astronomy
Note 15: The Reign of Bird-Jaguar at Yaxchilan. 7/17/99
An important aspect of the problem confronting contemporary evaluations of Maya astronomy concerns the fact that most people have a tendency to look for events in the past that occurred on a single, specific day which can then be related to a particular day-name position recorded by Maya astronomers in their Long Count notation. Since the sky itself was probably conceived by Maya astronomers as a continually evolving and changing spectacle, populated with living spirit-entities who moved from place to place in regular patterns of behavior, it seems prudent to embrace a wider frame of reference for recorded Maya dates than a single point in time that Eurocentric conceptualizations of astronomical reality generally reserve for them. In other words, what happens between two recorded Maya dates might be more significant than the two single events that mark the beginning and the end of the interval of time that separates them.
Another way of expressing this same possibility is to recognize, and keep in mind, the fact that certain brief intervals of time in the Maya calendrical structure had astronomical significance in and of themselves as they were counted by the regular advance of time day-name by day-name from one point in the almanac, haab, calendar round, and LC notation to the next. To individuals well-versed in the astronomical structure of the Maya calendar, and we must assume that Maya astronomers were exactly that during the Classic Period, events situated at positions both before and after recorded dates, when naturally expressed in multiples of 13 and 20 days, for instance, may well have gone unspoken simply because everyone who needed to know of their existence did know exactly and precisely where they fell in the structure of the recorded dates of the monuments. When the medium used to express an astronomical spectacle of broad scope and variety is limited to carving a date on a piece of stone with another sharper and harder piece of stone, certain kinds of restrictions were naturally imposed on the brute number of dates that any monument could hold. Finding the single best and most proper date to express a sequence of unfolding interactions among a variety of living spirit-powers in the sky then may well have been the highest motivation behind what it meant to be an astronomer during the Maya Classic Period.
To illustrate this point I have chosen three dates recorded by the Mayas at Yaxchilan on Stela 11, which commemorate events associated with the reign of Bird-Jaguar at that ceremonial complex. Tatiana Proskouriakoff, in "Historical Data in the Inscriptions of Yaxchilan, Part II" (Estudios de Cultura Maya), 177-201, has provided a purely historical analysis of the dates involved in this astronomical evaluation which fixes them in the context of Yaxchilan's development as a ceremonial complex without any particular reference to a correlation number and does not touch on the question of possible astronomy associated with Bird-Jaguar's reign at all. She notes that the date 9.16.1.0.0 11 Ahau 8 Zec, which fell 10 years after the death of Shield-Jaguar, marks the day that "Bird-Jaguar took office at Yaxchilan" (178). Prior to that, on the Maya date 9.15.19.1.1 1 Imix 19 Xul, a date recorded on the back of Stela 11, Bird-Jaguar was depicted as being involved in a "triumphal scene" in which he appears, "wearing a sunmask . . . before three kneeling prisoners, probably symbolizing his subject peoples" (178). Finally, Proskouriakoff notes that an 819-day cycle date was also recorded on the Stela marking the date 9.15.19.14.14 1 Ix 7 Uo, in association with the accession date (11 Ahau 8 Zec), which "probably gives the augury for the reign" (179).
Several observations can be made here with respect to Proskouriakoff's perception of the existence of hierarchical structures in Maya society in the wider context of their general absence in most other social and political contexts throughout the rest of the Western hemisphere in pre-Columbian times. A tradition that has long-stood in Eurocentric versions of Maya studies defines everything visible in its remains as having come into existence in order to express hierarchical divisions among the people of the civilization in virtually every aspect of their lives. The very idea of "reign" itself suggests that Bird-Jaguar held a position of dominance over a "subject" people who are depicted as slaves and prisoners to his rule. The idea of an "accession" to a throne reinforces that perception. The fact that the day of that event needs an "augury" in the 819-day cycle cannot help but bring to mind the role Merlin played in the glorious reign of King Arthur at the Round Table.
These concepts are so overdetermined by Eurocentric expectation and definition that one must approach them with more than a grain of salt in hand to dissipate the foam that bubbles up out of the gas-clouds of speculation that fuels their delusional compounds and conceals what might be more appropriate to a people who did not embrace concepts of hierarchy in the first place. These ideas have arisen in Western speculation because of the notion that "higher" expressions of culture necessarily formulate themselves in paradigms that closely parallel European perceptions of social development. In other words, as long as native Americans are aimless wandering nomads, they have no discernable social structure (hierarchy), and probably don't need one either; but, as soon as they become more sophisticated (Eurocentrically oriented because they began to build "cities"), they must develop concepts of hierarchy in their social relations because without them they cannot be classified as sophisticated. The problem here, of course, is that Europeans cannot conceive of social structures without hierarchy and cannot accept the possibility that the other might have done just that.
While it is not my intention to challenge Proskouriakoff's reading of these Maya texts, and by doing that also challenge the prevailing view of Maya civilization, as it has come to be perceived in the context of European cultural paradigms, there are significant grounds in the astronomy that exists here, in association with these dates in the Maya Long Count from a zero base-day fixed at 563334 in the Julian Day list, as opposed to the Goodman-Martinez-Thompson correlation at 584283, to do just exactly that, or, in less contentious terms, to suggest an alternative reading for the "scene" depicted on Stela 11 and reinforced by the data gathered from the 819-day cycle date that was also recorded there.
On the first day in the sequence, 9.15.14.1.1 1 Imix 19 Xul, which was recorded on the back of Stela 11 at Yaxchilan and apparently refers to Bird-Jaguar's identity as the sun, since he is depicted wearing a "sunmask," the Julian Day #1974195 has been reached from the zero base-day at 563334. That day was January 19, 693 A. D. On that day, Venus had reached an elongation of 33.7* from the sun in the evening sky and was moving away from its superior conjunction toward its maximum eastern elongation. At the same time, Jupiter was positioned at 5.0* of elongation from the sun in the evening sky and was just six days away from its solar conjunction which occurred on 7 Manik 5 Yaxkin or January 25, 693 A. D. On January 8, 3 Oc 8 Xul in the Maya CR, Jupiter had reached its last day of visibility before its solar conjunction 17 days before that event and stood at 13.5* of elongation from the sun in the evening sky with a setting time of 18:52 PM. Nearby, Mercury had reached a position of 13.2* of elongation from the sun and set at 18:50 PM, or two minutes before Jupiter crossed the western horizon. Mercury was accompanied by Deneb Algiedi (in Capricorn) which also set at 18:50 PM. At the same time, Venus was at 31.4* of elongation from the sun and set at 20:13 PM. 73-Aquarii, a star very close to the ecliptic, set at 20:10, three minutes before Venus. To say that Bird-Jaguar, wearing a "sunmask," holds three "people" in thrall in the scene depicted on Stela 11, and that they represent his "subject" peoples, could also be read as a reference to the fact that 11 days before the "triumphal scene," on 3 Oc 8 Xul, the sun held Jupiter, on its last day of visibility before solar conjunction, together with Mercury and Deneb Algiedi in thrall, since the three of them disappeared across the western horizon in a cluster separated by the passage of only two minutes of real time. The position of Venus and 73-Aquarii can be said to anticipate part of the celestial action coming around in the next date recorded on the Stela, the 819-day cycle "augury" date.
Moving ahead to that position, the first thing to take note of is that the interval separating the 1 Imix 19 Xul date from the base-day position of 1 Ix 7 Uo in the 819-day cycle is equal to 273 days, since 9.15.19.14.14, Julian Day # 1974468, or October 19, 693 A. D., fell precisely that many days after the "triumphal scene" shown on the Stela. 273 is both a multiple of 13 (21 X 13 = 273), one group of 13-days longer than the 260-day almanac, and is also exactly one-third the length of the 819-day cycle itself (3 X 273 = 819). An important point to take note of here is that 1 Ix 7 Uo, as a recorded base-day in the 819-day cycle, also points to 1 Imix 19 Xul as having some formal relationship to that cycle, even if Proskouriakoff does not read it as such, simply on the ground that it has a coefficient of 1 in the almanac day-name position (1 Imix), which it must have to qualify, and because it stands at a position one-third of the cycle's count toward completion (273 days) prior to the recognized base at 1 Ix 7 Uo. In other words, if an 819-day cycle is started at 1 Imix 19 Xul, it will reach completion 273 days before the cycle that begins on 9.15.19.14.14, without ever being at variance with whatever procedures were used by the Mayas to count such cycles of day-names. Whether or not the Mayas ran 819-day cycles in tandem sequences with base-days separated by thirds is a question we cannot answer but there is no mathematical reason to prevent such a thing because both 273 and 819 are multiples of 13 (21 and 63 X 13 respectively), which will always give the day-name at one-third intervals a coefficient of 1. The reason for the suggestion that 1 Imix 19 Xul bears a relationship to the 819-day cycle will become clear later.
Only a few events seem to have significance on October 19, 693 A. D., on the actual base-day of the 819-day cycle from that temporal position. Venus, for instance, had reached 40.9* of elongation in the morning sky, was moving back toward superior conjunction with the sun, and rose at 3:15 AM. Zaniah, a star in the constellation Virgo, which rests fairly close to the ecliptic, crossed the horizon seven minutes earlier at 3:08 AM. Mars enters the picture here at 26.7* of elongation from the sun in the morning sky and had just crossed the celestial equator with a declination of -00*08'53". The role Mars plays in this sequence of dates will become clear shortly. Jupiter rested at 113.7* of elongation from the sun in the evening sky and set at 1:33 AM. 73-Aquarii, in conjunction with Venus on Jupiter's last day of visibility before solar conjunction (3 Oc 8 Xul) 11 days before the day-name (1 Imix 19 Xul) marked by the Mayas at Yaxchilan on Stela 11, also set at 1:33 AM that same day. In other words, Venus was replaced by Jupiter as the planet seen to be in conjunction with 73-Aquarii in the temporal transition from one day to the next in the sequence of dates that tell a story about "Bird-Jaguar" at Yaxchilan.
The interval between the 819-day cycle date on Stela 11 at Yaxchilan, 1 Ix 7 Uo, and the accession date on the same Stela, 11 Ahau 8 Zec, is 426 days. From a purely astronomical point of view there is very little that can be said about that number. From a purely Maya calendrical point of view, however, it has some interesting characteristics. If you divide it into two parts of 400 days, on the one hand, and 26 days, on the other, the first part is one day longer than an average synodical period of Jupiter (399 days) and 20 Mayan uinals in length (20 X 20 = 400), while the other part is equal to 13 + 13 days. What this means from a calendrical point of view is that the day-name reached after 400 days will have the same almanac coefficient as the target date of the accession; that is, 11. This is true because it falls 26 days before 11 Ahau 8 Zec. Also true is that the day-name in question will have the same almanac name as does the one that serves as base-day for the 819-day cycle, that is, Ix. The day in question is November 23, 694 A. D. (Julian Day #1974868), and marks a position of Venus where the planet had reached 47.3* of elongation from the sun in the evening sky with its declination set at -24*14'52". Both these figures are very close to maximum in terms of Venus's eastern elongation from the sun and in terms of its maximum southerly extreme from the celestial equator. As it turns out, however, this position of Venus on 11 Ix 2 Zotz, 26 days before the accession of "Bird-Jaguar," fairly pales in comparison to the one that follows it 13 days later when the count moves forward to 11 Manik 15 Zotz (December 6, 694 A. D.--Julian Day #1974881).
On this day, Venus reached 46.0* of elongation from the sun in the evening sky and set at 20:58 PM. The planet went slightly after Nashira (in Capricorn) which set at 20:54 PM. At the same time, Mars reached 102.6* of elongation in the evening sky and set at 1:02 AM with a declination of +00*24'39". Jupiter, on the other hand, stood at 102.0* of elongation from the sun in the evening sky and set at 1:02 AM with a declination of -01*10'19". While planetary conjunctions are difficult to define in these kinds of terms, this is probably what one between Mars and Jupiter would look like in the sky over Yaxchilan 13 days before "Bird-Jaguar's" accession. 12 days after this event and one day before the accession (10 Cauac 7 Zec) the sun reached an extreme southerly declination of -23*36'10" and stood at Winter Solstice on December 18, 694 A. D.
On the following day, of course, 9.16.1.0.0 11 Ahau 8 Zec (December 19, 694 A. D.--Julian Day #1974894), "Bird-Jaguar" took his place as ruler of Yaxchilan. One can say that not much else was going on in the sky or on the ground, which may be perfectly fitting given the fact that one person about to become so exalted would not welcome competition from mere celestial events. I jest of course. At any rate, Venus had fallen from its maximum elongation to 42.5* in the evening sky and would achieve its inferior conjunction with the sun 40 days after 11 Ahau 8 Zec, again we see a multiple of 20, on 12 Ahau 8 Yaxkin (January 28, 695 A. D.). On the following day, 13 Imix 9 Yaxkin, which may recall the day of departure on 1 Imix 19 Xul, Venus became visible again in the morning sky when it reached 8.2* of elongation from the sun. Saturn reached its last day of visibility in the evening sky before its solar conjunction on December 10, 694 A. D., 9 days before the accession, and stood at 7.2* of elongation from the sun in the evening sky with a declination of -23*12'31" which places it near a maximum southerly extreme of its own.
Two other things of significance have passed, unremarked, in this evaluation of potential planetary astronomy associated with the accession date of "Bird-Jaguar" at Yaxchilan. The day of the Mars-Jupiter conjunction, 11 Manik 15 Zotz, stands in meaningful relationship to the base-day of the Dresden Codex Eclipse Table because the interval separating one from the other is equal to 5 turns of the Maya almanac plus one day; that is, 5 X 260 + 1 counts forward to 9.16.4.10.8 12 Lamat 1 Muan in the Maya Long Count. Why this might matter in more than a curious kind of way concerns the fact that the average number of days between single consecutive conjunctions of Mars and Jupiter is 816.4 days. That same interval is also equal to 30 nodical revolutions of the moon (30 X 27.21222 = 816.3666 days). The 819-day cycle, while certainly not an exact value for the interval between Mars-Jupiter conjunctions, which vary widely in terms of their real intervals over time, could still have been used as an average marker in calendrical terms for times when such conjunctions were scheduled to occur. Being mostly visible events, Maya astronomers would have been able to adjust, and count, variable intervals between real events through naked-eye observations of their actual occurrence. That the cycle might have been used in some way to assist in the development of the Dresden Codex Eclipse Table is also a possibility that cannot be discounted given the facts that it does express a multiple of lunar nodical motion and stands here in a meaningful relationship to the actual base-day of the Eclipse Table itself. Even though some multiples of 260 can function as effective eclipse numbers, 1300 is not one that does.
A final note: when the 819-day cycle is extended from the 1 Imix 19 Xul position recorded on Stela 11 to its logical and mathematical conclusion in real Maya time, the day-name in the CR 1 Ahau 8 Zac (9.16.1.6.0) is reached. That day corresponds to April 18, 695 A. D. (Julian Day #1975014). On this day, Jupiter had reached a position of 6.0* of elongation from the sun in the morning sky after its solar conjunction and rose above the eastern horizon at 5:32 AM. Three minutes before that the moon crossed the horizon at 5:29 AM. Jupiter's conjunction with the sun occurred 8 days prior to this position on 6 Eb 0 Zac (April 10, 695 A. D.). With a 17-day interval of invisibility after a solar conjunction, Jupiter reached its first day of visibility on April 27, 695 A. D. (10 Muluc 17 Zac in the CR) and stood at 12.5* of elongation from the sun in the morning sky. On the same day, the sun rose in conjunction with the Pleiades crossing the horizon at 5:41 AM. Alcyone crossed at the same hour and minute of real time.
This is designer astronomy. On 1 Imix 19 Xul, Jupiter was 5.0* of elongation from the sun in the evening sky prior to its solar conjunction which fell 6 days later. On its last day of visibility, Jupiter was in conjunction with Mercury and Deneb Algiedi and Bird-Jaguar, wearing a sunmask, was depicted as holding three "prisoners" in thrall. 819 days later, Jupiter stands at 6.0* of elongation from the sun after its solar conjunction, having shifted itself from one side of the sun to the other, and re-emerges in visibility on the same day that the sun stands in conjunction with the star cluster Pleiades. This astronomy, of course, exactly recapitulates the circumstances at the zero base-day with the single difference that Jupiter has replaced Venus as the planet which announces the beginning of the rainy season in Mesoamerica. Here, the beginning of the first rainy season after Bird-Jaguar's accession to the throne of Yaxchilan, which fell 120 days (6 X 20) before this event occurred, is the one announced by Jupiter's reappearance in the morning sky. We, and Maya astronomers, already knew this "replacement" was going to happen because Jupiter replaced Venus as the planet in conjunction with 73-Aquarii as events in the sky unfolded from 1 Imix 19 Xul (Venus and 73-Aquarii separated by 3 minutes of arc at setting on Jupiter's last day of visibility before solar conjunction) to 1 Ix 7 Uo (Jupiter and 73-Aquarii crossing the western horizon together at 1:33 AM).
The idea that a human being can portray himself, or be portrayed by others, as the sun, holding planets and stars in their regular courses of interaction, both supports and undermines the notion of hierarchical structures that Eurocentric thinkers are so quick to find in native expressions of ceremonial performance of duty in Maya monumental architecture. Read from the perspective of centuries of European practice and experience, Bird-Jaguar can be seen as an arrogant, elitist overlord who does not shy away from comparing himself to the sun, to the spirit-force recognized by all native Americans as the ultimate source of life, as the supreme Father to the absolute Mother of us all who is the earth. And it is precisely that other side of the native American equation of life-force which undermines the notion of hierarchy in Eurocentric perceptions of native American culture. Bird-Jaguar acts as a human surrogate for the sun who stands in the midst of a human population that depends absolutely on his ritual performance of duty first to achieve and then to sustain, through his connection to the beginning of the rainy season, the agricultural production, which is always Earth-Mother derived, that makes his, and everyone else's, life possible at all. That burden might be perceived by some as one of advantage and privilege but from a native American point of view, and I speak here only for myself, I'd rather be in Philadelphia.
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To reach [Note 1]; [Note 2]; [Note 3]; [Note 4]; [Note 5]; [Note 6]; [Note 7]; [Note 8]; [Note 9]; [Note 9a]; [Note 10]; [Note 11]; [Note 12]; [Note 13]; [Note 14]; [Note 16]; [Note 17]; [Note 18] in this series of thoughts.
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