The Borgia Codex begins with eight pages of the Gregorian "trecena" count, without the proper format of the Maya version.
The partially destroyed copy from Dover Pubications has an interesting story behind it. And very serious doubts as to its origins. The story put out by the Vatican was that the children of the servants, were playing games and the Borgia manuscript accidentally fell into the fire.
However, if only one would change the symbols of the politically correct church language into church hierarchy, one might find that the servants are the "children" of the "Papa" [the Pope] who had told his children, [the servants], to burn the manuscripts [the codices] of the "heathens." And, in their simple faith, picked up the recently delivered Borgia Codex.
The Holy "Father," realizing, his mistake immediately, recovered the new, slightly singed manuscript from the fire.
The monks who created this calendar form, knew about the trecena calendar of its creator, D. Veladèz, who may have engraved it in 1551, or Fray Francisco de las Navas [Cogs or Wheels] himself, who became the new owner of that calendar in 1551.
Although the Handbook of the Middle American Indians, Vol. 14, Part Three, (1975), claimed the VEYTIA calendar was a true "Native" manuscript, a recent informant told me that any Spanish surname that ends with the letter "Z" is that of a Jewish person; an engraver of this type of calendar. On that basis, and the fact that a monk obtained the calendar, possibly in 1551, he may have been considered a heretical prisoner of the Inquisition. His calendars were published later by the monk, Fra Francisco de la Nava, in 1584. Whether Veladez was alive at that time or not was not known by the editors of the Handbook!
Even so, the Borgia Codex did create a 364 day calendar, that emphasized the 260-day ritual calendar of the Mesoamericans, with tiny feet to indicate the missing day[s] for the 365-day year. The missing elements here, are the 104 days that are also to be counted in the top and bottom borders.
On a whim, I decided to check the Chinese 60-year calendar. I had never been able to unravel the method they had used for their calculations. When I discovered that the Borgia did not have any definitive sequence that included the accepted year bearers, I thought it odd.
The Chinese calendar jogged my memory a bit. I recalled that they had used five names for one phase of their calendar calculations: the five words were metal, wood, fire, water and earth, Because the twelve animal month names were nearby, both the Aztec and the Chinese calendars made sense. Five times twelve equaled the sixty year cycle.
Returning to the Borgia, I resumed my search for sequential names in the five glyph column of the ritual calendar. None appeared, so I returned to Sylvanus Morley's 1956 book. I only found a four-glyph set, similar to the Maya group. The Aztec version reads: Knife, House, Rabbit and Water.
However, no proper year bearer sequence, neither four glyphs nor five appeared within the eight calendar pages. There were only the tiny feet to say that the calendar could not accommodate the full 365 days in the 260/364 layout. Even so it was an impressive attempt to ignore the Gregorian months while still following the new 365-day year.
As for the subsequent pages of "god" groups, except for the pages defining the sun, moon, the Great Star of Sahagùn and the butterfly event, that includes the "venus" attributes, the majority of the pages were overdone with what Linda Schele would call a "spaghetti-syndrome." Apparently they were created to impress but had no useful information. I will leave this to those enjoy peering into a morass of repetitive data that contains multiple names for similar god-entities throughout the codices.
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| First page of the Borgia Trecena attempts |
However, if only one would change the symbols of the politically correct church language into church hierarchy, one might find that the servants are the "children" of the "Papa" [the Pope] who had told his children, [the servants], to burn the manuscripts [the codices] of the "heathens." And, in their simple faith, picked up the recently delivered Borgia Codex.
The Holy "Father," realizing, his mistake immediately, recovered the new, slightly singed manuscript from the fire.
 |
| The last page [8] of the Borgia calendar |
Although the Handbook of the Middle American Indians, Vol. 14, Part Three, (1975), claimed the VEYTIA calendar was a true "Native" manuscript, a recent informant told me that any Spanish surname that ends with the letter "Z" is that of a Jewish person; an engraver of this type of calendar. On that basis, and the fact that a monk obtained the calendar, possibly in 1551, he may have been considered a heretical prisoner of the Inquisition. His calendars were published later by the monk, Fra Francisco de la Nava, in 1584. Whether Veladez was alive at that time or not was not known by the editors of the Handbook!
Even so, the Borgia Codex did create a 364 day calendar, that emphasized the 260-day ritual calendar of the Mesoamericans, with tiny feet to indicate the missing day[s] for the 365-day year. The missing elements here, are the 104 days that are also to be counted in the top and bottom borders.
On a whim, I decided to check the Chinese 60-year calendar. I had never been able to unravel the method they had used for their calculations. When I discovered that the Borgia did not have any definitive sequence that included the accepted year bearers, I thought it odd.
The Chinese calendar jogged my memory a bit. I recalled that they had used five names for one phase of their calendar calculations: the five words were metal, wood, fire, water and earth, Because the twelve animal month names were nearby, both the Aztec and the Chinese calendars made sense. Five times twelve equaled the sixty year cycle.
Returning to the Borgia, I resumed my search for sequential names in the five glyph column of the ritual calendar. None appeared, so I returned to Sylvanus Morley's 1956 book. I only found a four-glyph set, similar to the Maya group. The Aztec version reads: Knife, House, Rabbit and Water.
However, no proper year bearer sequence, neither four glyphs nor five appeared within the eight calendar pages. There were only the tiny feet to say that the calendar could not accommodate the full 365 days in the 260/364 layout. Even so it was an impressive attempt to ignore the Gregorian months while still following the new 365-day year.
As for the subsequent pages of "god" groups, except for the pages defining the sun, moon, the Great Star of Sahagùn and the butterfly event, that includes the "venus" attributes, the majority of the pages were overdone with what Linda Schele would call a "spaghetti-syndrome." Apparently they were created to impress but had no useful information. I will leave this to those enjoy peering into a morass of repetitive data that contains multiple names for similar god-entities throughout the codices.
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