Note 184 — Chapter IV · MEXICAN HIEROGLYPHICS—MANUSCRIPTS—ARITHMETIC—CHRONOLOGY—ASTRONOMY

This is the conclusion to which Gama arrives, after a very careful investigation of the subject. He supposes that the “bundles,” or cycles, of fifty-two years—by which, as we shall see, the Mexicans computed time—ended alternately at midnight and midday. (Descripcion, Parte 1, p. 52, et seq.) He finds some warrant for this in Acosta’s account (lib. 6, cap. 2), though contradicted by Torquemada (Monarch. Ind., lib. 5, cap. 33), and, as it appears, by Sahagun,—whose work, however, Gama never saw (Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 7, cap. 9),—both of whom place the close of the year at midnight. Gama’s hypothesis derives confirmation from a circumstance I have not seen noticed. Besides the “bundle” of fifty-two years, the Mexicans had a larger cycle of one hundred and four years, called “an old age.” As this was not used in their reckonings, which were carried on by their “bundles,” it seems highly probable that it was designed to express the period which would bring round the commencement of the smaller cycles to the same hour, and in which the intercalary days, amounting to twenty-five, might be comprehended without a fraction.