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The Twenty Day Signs
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The Twenty Day Signs
The twenty day signs are one of the two cycles of the tzolkin, the 260-day ritual count used across Mesoamerica. Each sign has a name (Imix, Ik, Akbal, Kan and the rest in Yucatec Maya, with different names in other Mesoamerican languages such as Nahuatl), and a set of associations: a direction, a patron deity, and qualities of character and fortune.
Running the twenty day signs against the thirteen tones produces the 260-day count, in which a given sign-and-number pairing recurs only every two hundred and sixty days. The count is attested across Mesoamerica for well over two thousand years.
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