Search Wizard Step 2

This page lets you define what type of search you’d like to do (Search for) and what results you’d like to display in list format (Showing). At present, only information from the Madrid Codex is available for searching. By December of 2006, we hope to have the data from all of the Maya codices on-line.

Almanac: The Madrid Codex contains approximately 250 almanacs. An almanac includes dates in the 260-day ritual calendar (the tzolk’in ), as well as pictures and hieroglyphic texts. Almanacs are divided into a series of frames which usually consist of a hieroglyphic caption, two bar-and-dot numbers (the first in black and the second in red, or outlined in black-and-white drawings of the Madrid Codex), and frequently a picture.

Date: Almanacs in the Maya codices typically record dates in the tzolk’in (260-day calendar) and occasionally in the haab' (365-day calendar). For a discussion of how both calendars operated,  see Maya Dates and Calendars.

Iconography: The pictures in Maya almanacs are also referred to as the almanac’s iconography.

Text: Almost all of the approximately 250 almanacs in the Madrid Codex contain information recorded in a hieroglyphic script which represents the almanac’s text. Individual frames have what we call hieroglyphic captions.

Theme: There are a number of common themes that crosscut the almanacs in the Madrid Codex. Examples include planting, hunting, offering, weaving, etc.

Copyright (c) 2002-2005 by Gabrielle Vail.  All Rights Reserved