The Tzolkin Calendar

After a long hiatus, we are back to blogging! We are looking at the various Mayan calendars, their purpose and use. We took a look at the Haab, now lets consider the Tzolkin.

The Tzolkin is really two independant calendars that run side by side. the first cycle is  one of 13 days, numbered 1-13. The other cycle is 20 days, each day has a name of its own.( Think of our calendar, Monday Tuesday Wednesday, that is similar to the 20 day calendar). Each day, both the 13 day calendar and the 20 day calendat advance by one. If it were Monday March 5th, and we already knew it was march, we might say Monday the 5th or Monday 5. Then Tuesday 6, Wednesday 7 and so on. For the Mayans the number part went to 13 and restarted, the name of the day went thru the list of 20 and then restarts.

Hopefully you can count to 13, so you get that part of the calendar. We will call that part of the calendar tones. The names of days are below with the rough translation of the word.
  Imix-crocodile
 Ik-wind
 Akbal-night
Kan-seed
 Chikchan-sperpent
Kimi-transformation
Manik-deer
Lamat-star
Muluk-offering
Ok-dog
 Chuen-monkey
 Eb-road
 Ben-read
 Ix-jaguar
 Men-eagle
 Kib-wisdom
 Kaban-earth
 Etznab-flint
 Kawak-storm
 and Ahau- sun. 









Now lets get a quick visual as to how these two cycles work together.











Look at the tones, and you will see the Mayan representation for numbers we have discusses. One dot for one, two for two, etc. Then a bar represents 5, 2 bars is ten. Using those combinations, we see the inner circle that goes up to 13.


So if we started at 1 Imix, that would show the first number and the Name of the first day. It would then run through the cycle, with the numbers turning over at 13 and the names turning over after Ahau. If we continued on in that fashion, it would take 260 days for the calendar to get all the way back to the start of 1 Imix. In some illustrations, the days are called kin, so in the illustration above, we see the wheels for 260 kin or days.

OK so that is 2 major calendars out of the way. Before we get to the Long Count, we will visit a method or practice of the Mayans involving assigning a creature to each day. So, next up, Lord of the Night!


J.T. Turner, Mayanist