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The Aztec sun stone, often erroneously called the calendar stone, is on display at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. The actual Aztec calendar consists of a 365-day calendar cycle called xiuhpōhualli (year count), and a 260-day ritual cycle called tōnalpōhualli (day count).
East side of stela C, Quirigua with the mythical creation date of 13 baktuns, 0 katuns, 0 tuns, 0 winals, 0 kins, 4 Ahau 8 Cumku – August 11, 3114 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating base-20 and base-18 calendar used by pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya.
The Long Count calendar identifies a date by counting the number of days from August 11, 3114 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar or September 6, 3114 BCE in the Julian Calendar (-3113 astronomical). The Long Count days were tallied in a modified base-20 scheme. Thus 0.0.0.1.5 is equal to 25, and 0.0.0.2.0 is equal to 40.
Together, these calendars would coincide once every 52 years, the so-called "calendar round," which was initiated by a New Fire ceremony. Aztec years were named for the last day of the 18th month according to the 260-day calendar the tonalpōhualli. The first year of the Aztec calendar round was called 2 Acatl and the last 1 Tochtli.
The writing system used is very close to the Maya script, using affixal glyphs and Long Count dates, but is read only in one column at a time as is the Zapotec script. It has been suggested that this Isthmian or Epi-Olmec script is the direct predecessor of the Maya script, thus giving the Maya script a non-Maya origin.
The 13 days were not considered unlucky, but they were not labeled using the count (numbers and symbol) combinations used for the rest of the Aztec calendar, as they have their own unique count. [4] A notable Indigenous leader born in the Nemontemi, was the Cuauhtemoctzin, one of the last tlahtoani of Mexico-Tenochtitlan.
The Aztec calendar was composed of two separate cycles—one of 260 days called the tonalpohualli (day count) and one of 365 days called the xiuhpohualli (year count).. The 365-day xiuhpohualli consisted of 18 twenty-day "months" (or veintenas), plus an additional 5 days at the end of the year.
This book was published in 1792. In it León y Gama described the discovery in 1790 of two of the most important pieces of Aztec art in the Zócalo, main plaza of the city of Mexico: the sun stone and a statue of Coatlicue, an Aztec goddess. León y Gama also included in it most of his knowledge and theories on how the Aztecs measured time.