Category
Haab Months
19 entries. Click any to see everything it connects to.
The haab is the Maya solar calendar of 365 days: eighteen months of twenty days each, Pop, Wo, Sip, Sotz and the rest through Kumku, followed by a five-day period called Wayeb regarded as unlucky and dangerous. Because the haab carries no leap-year adjustment, its months slowly drift against the true solar year over long spans of time. Combined with the 260-day tzolkin it produces the Calendar Round, a fifty-two year cycle after which a given date pairing recurs. This category holds the nineteen named periods, each carrying its own patron deity and rites, recorded in the Dresden Codex and in colonial Yucatec sources such as Diego de Landa's account, and confirmed independently by dated inscriptions.
Facts
Overview
- Entries in the Atlas
- 19
- Size of the Traditional Set
- 18 named months of 20 days, plus the 5-day Wayeb 1
- Peoples and Traditions Covered
- Kept across many distinct Maya peoples and languages, Yucatec, Ch'olan, K'iche', Kaqchikel, Ixil and others, not one culture. Day-keepers in the Guatemalan highlands maintain the counts today. 1
Structure
- Structure
- A 365-day year of eighteen twenty-day months followed by the five-day Wayeb, with no leap day, so it drifts against the true solar year. Meshed with the 260-day tzolkin it yields the 52-year Calendar Round. 1
Status
- Status Today
- Living tradition, practised today 1
Learn More
The Months of the Maya Solar Calendar
The haab is the Maya solar calendar of three hundred and sixty-five days: eighteen months of twenty days each, followed by a short period of five days called Wayeb, regarded as unlucky and dangerous. Each of the eighteen named months (Pop, Wo, Sip, and the rest), runs its twenty days, and the year turns through them alongside the separate 260-day ritual count.
Combined with the 260-day tzolkin, the haab produces the Calendar Round, a cycle of fifty-two years after which a given tzolkin-and-haab date recurs, a fundamental unit of Mesoamerican timekeeping.
The Solar Year and the Wayeb
The haab approximates the solar year but, lacking a leap day, drifts slowly against the true seasons over long spans. The five-day Wayeb at the year's end was a liminal, ill-omened time, marked by rituals of caution. The haab worked together with the tzolkin and, for long spans, the Long Count.
The atlas gives each haab month its place in the year and its associations, and treats the Wayeb period. The haab belongs with the Maya calendrical material, the tzolkin day-signs and tones, and the Long Count, under Calendars & Time.
Enter a year to compare these entries as the atlas records them at that moment. Leave it empty for the present. A year before the common era is entered with a minus sign, so 44 BCE is minus 44.
Haab Months
18
Wayeb (Unlucky Days)
1