reaching back three thousand years could be correlated, as could dates probing far into the future. Each group of five Maya numbers meant a specific day in a certain month of a given year. But more significantly, they formed a throbbing tie to the ancestors.
These records were preserved in a beguiling way. In front of temples and public buildings were erected groups of stelae, squared stone pillars four feet wide and sometimes as tall as three men, but more often shorter. On each of the long, slim faces thus provided, sculptors of rare skill had carved intricate hieroglyphics—faces of gods, officials in regal and ornate costumes, animals and arcane symbols to remind the worshipers that mysterious powers influence daily life. But for Cimi Xoc and his granddaughter the most valuable segment of each stela was the inscription of dates of the period. Ix Zubin would never forget the first day when her grandfather, in defiance of custom, had taken her to the nearby mainland city of Cobá, where he showed her, a mere girl, the magnificent scatter of stelae summarizing that site’s resplendent history.
“This one speaks of things that happened more than a thousand years ago,” he said reverently. “A priest of our line helped this ruler,” and here he indicated the specific king reigning in that distant period, “to consolidate his power. You can see the slaves kneeling before him.”
He then showed her symbols dating the stela’s events to Friday 9 May 755—9:16.4:1.17 7 Imix 14 Tzec—and it was with this clearly defined time that she began her involvement with the Maya numbering system. Soon she was able to read other stelae, one recording events from November 939, another more recent, in February 1188.
From that simple start with the reading of the Cobá stelae, which she accomplished with ease, he taught her the intricate systems which his son, her father, would have to master were he to take charge of the temple’s calculations, but which the young man had proved too limited intellectually to learn. Gradually Ix Zubin began to perform her father’s calculations, and in a surprisingly short time she was working in astronomy, then in the calculations for Venus, and finally in formulae for predicting eclipses. “There are very few parts of our priestly art,” her grandfather said, “more useful to us and more awesome to the people, including our rulers, than our ability to warn: ‘Next month the sun will disappear, and unless you help us build that new room in the temple, the sun will not reappear and we shall all die.’ The threat is useful, because when the sun actually disappears as we predicted, they listen, even the rulers. And the house is completed.”
For fifteen years, 1474 through the first months of 1489, Ix Zubin remained in the shadows, performing the sacred calculations requiredby her father in the conduct of his duties, and his reports became so treasured because of their accuracy that he became renowned on the island, one who had to be listened to. They were a family tandem—the High Priest performing before the crowds, and his sharp little daughter working her magical numbers in the shadows. The pair filled an honored role in Cozumel, and when she married a young priest in the temple, she helped prepare him for the day when he would take over the role of High Priest.
In those early years when Ix Zubin first became aware that great changes threatened to engulf and modify the Maya empire, she was—though completely unknown—one of the most effective astronomers in the far-flung realm and much superior to any then working in Europe or Asia, for her subtle knowledge of the passage of the earth through its seasons and the movement of the stars through their heavens was unsurpassed, while her mastery of numbers and the calculation of time were equaled in no other part of the world.
Those were years of contentment. Often she thought that her father, her husband and she were the happiest trio in
These records were preserved in a beguiling way. In front of temples and public buildings were erected groups of stelae, squared stone pillars four feet wide and sometimes as tall as three men, but more often shorter. On each of the long, slim faces thus provided, sculptors of rare skill had carved intricate hieroglyphics—faces of gods, officials in regal and ornate costumes, animals and arcane symbols to remind the worshipers that mysterious powers influence daily life. But for Cimi Xoc and his granddaughter the most valuable segment of each stela was the inscription of dates of the period. Ix Zubin would never forget the first day when her grandfather, in defiance of custom, had taken her to the nearby mainland city of Cobá, where he showed her, a mere girl, the magnificent scatter of stelae summarizing that site’s resplendent history.
“This one speaks of things that happened more than a thousand years ago,” he said reverently. “A priest of our line helped this ruler,” and here he indicated the specific king reigning in that distant period, “to consolidate his power. You can see the slaves kneeling before him.”
He then showed her symbols dating the stela’s events to Friday 9 May 755—9:16.4:1.17 7 Imix 14 Tzec—and it was with this clearly defined time that she began her involvement with the Maya numbering system. Soon she was able to read other stelae, one recording events from November 939, another more recent, in February 1188.
From that simple start with the reading of the Cobá stelae, which she accomplished with ease, he taught her the intricate systems which his son, her father, would have to master were he to take charge of the temple’s calculations, but which the young man had proved too limited intellectually to learn. Gradually Ix Zubin began to perform her father’s calculations, and in a surprisingly short time she was working in astronomy, then in the calculations for Venus, and finally in formulae for predicting eclipses. “There are very few parts of our priestly art,” her grandfather said, “more useful to us and more awesome to the people, including our rulers, than our ability to warn: ‘Next month the sun will disappear, and unless you help us build that new room in the temple, the sun will not reappear and we shall all die.’ The threat is useful, because when the sun actually disappears as we predicted, they listen, even the rulers. And the house is completed.”
For fifteen years, 1474 through the first months of 1489, Ix Zubin remained in the shadows, performing the sacred calculations requiredby her father in the conduct of his duties, and his reports became so treasured because of their accuracy that he became renowned on the island, one who had to be listened to. They were a family tandem—the High Priest performing before the crowds, and his sharp little daughter working her magical numbers in the shadows. The pair filled an honored role in Cozumel, and when she married a young priest in the temple, she helped prepare him for the day when he would take over the role of High Priest.
In those early years when Ix Zubin first became aware that great changes threatened to engulf and modify the Maya empire, she was—though completely unknown—one of the most effective astronomers in the far-flung realm and much superior to any then working in Europe or Asia, for her subtle knowledge of the passage of the earth through its seasons and the movement of the stars through their heavens was unsurpassed, while her mastery of numbers and the calculation of time were equaled in no other part of the world.
Those were years of contentment. Often she thought that her father, her husband and she were the happiest trio in
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