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Lamat, the Star and the Rabbit

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Lamat, the Star and the Rabbit

Lamat is the eighth of the twenty day signs of the Tzolk'in, the 260-day sacred count of the Maya, kept by living daykeepers and reconstructed for the Classic period from the inscriptions. Recorded here by its Yucatec name, Lamat, it corresponds to the day Q'anil in the living K'iche' tradition. Its imagery joins the star, particularly Venus, whose cycles the Maya tracked with great care, and the rabbit, together with abundance, fertility, and harmony; the K'iche' Q'anil is explicitly the day of the seed and the ripening harvest. In the directional scheme that runs through the twenty signs it belongs to the south and the colour yellow. These are the meanings the Maya calendrical tradition carries for the day, presented as that living and reconstructed tradition frames them.

Lamat is the eighth of the twenty Tzolk'in day signs; the living K'iche' tradition knows the corresponding day as Q'anil, a name connected to the colour yellow and, by extension, to ripeness, seeds and abundance. Lamat's imagery combines the star, generally identified with the planet Venus given its prominence in Maya astronomy, with the rabbit, a pairing epigraphers connect to the Maya association of a rabbit figure with the moon, visible in the animal shapes some traditions read into the lunar surface. In the directional scheme, Lamat belongs to the south and the colour yellow, closing the second four-day directional set. The Venus association situates Lamat within the wider Maya tradition of tracking Venus's synodic cycle, recorded with particular precision in the Postclassic Dresden Codex's Venus tables.

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