In Maya Daykeeping, three divinatory calendars from
highland Guatemala - examples of a Mayan literary tradition that
includes the Popul Vuh, Annals of the Cakchiquels, and the Titles
of the Lords of Totonicapan - dating to 1685, 1722, and 1855, are
transcribed in K'iche or Kaqchikel side-by-side
with English translations. Calendars such as these continue to be
the basis for prognostication, determining everything from the time
for planting and harvest to foreshadowing illness and death. Good,
bad, and mixed fates can all be found in these examples of the
solar calendar and the 260-day divinatory calendar.
The use of such calendars is mentioned in historical and
ethnographic works, but very few examples are known to exist. Each
of the three calendars transcribed and translated by John M. Weeks,
Frauke Sachse, and Christian M. Prager - and housed at the
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology -
is unique in structure and content. Moreover, except for an
unpublished study of the 1722 calendar by Rudolf Schuller and
Oliver La Farge (1934), these little-known works appear to have
escaped the attention of most scholars. Introductory essays
contextualize each document in time and space, and a series of
appendixes present previously unpublished calendrical notes
assembled in the early twentieth century.
Providing considerable information on the divinatory use of
calendars in colonial highland Maya society previously unavailable
without a visit to the University of
Pennsylvania's archives, Maya Daykeeping
is an invaluable primary resource for Maya scholars.
Mesoamerican Worlds Series
