Meaning
Two follows one in every run of thirteen, and every sign meets it once in the 260. The highland ethnography, as reported, makes the low numbers gentle; it gives no fixed character to two itself, and a traditional-count site warns against inventing one.
Our keyword, "pairing, duality", and our sentence, that two brings the pair, day and night, one side and the other, and asks for balance between them, are EsoTerrier's, a reading aid in our mild band and not a teaching of the tradition.
In the count two never stands alone: a daykeeper reads 2 Iq' or 2 Kej, and the sign carries the meaning while the number says how gently the day is felt.
Days and ceremonies
Its first day is 2 Iq', day 2 of the 260; the twentieth and last is 2 Ajpu, day 210. Among the highland year bearers, 2 No'j bore the year that began on 28 February 1988, the year of our sample person's birth.
The numeral
Two is written as two dots side by side. Thompson identified the Classic head that writes 2 as a god with a hand over his head, the god he also gave to the day Etz'nab'.
In the count
The number 2 falls on twenty days of the 260: days 2, 15, 28, 41, 54, 67, 80, 93, 106, 119, 132, 145, 158, 171, 184, 197, 210, 223, 236 and 249, with the signs Iq', Tz'ikin, Q'anil, Imox, I'x, Kej, Ajpu, Aj, Kame, Kawoq, E, Kan, Tijax, B'atz', K'at, No'j, Tz'i', Aq'ab'al, Ajmaq and Toj in that order. A sign comes back every twenty days and a number every thirteen, so the same pairing, such as 2 Iq', returns only after 260 days. Each year the highland year bearer's number rises by one, because 365 days are 28 runs of thirteen and one day more.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Strength, in the highland reports
- The number gives the day its force: low numbers gentle, high numbers strong (Tedlock at Momostenango and Bunzel at Chichicastenango, as reported) sourced
- Our band
- mild; the bands and their edges are EsoTerrier's grouping, not a published scheme our construction
- Our keyword and sentence
- "pairing, duality"; Two brings the pair (day and night, one side and the other) and asks for balance between them. our construction
- Head variant of the numeral, after Thompson
- a god with a hand over his head, the god he gave to the day Etz'nab' sourced
- A fixed character for the number
- None established; which numbers are good differs from town to town disputed
How the schools read it
- Highland ethnography, as reported
- The number is the strength of the day, gentle in the low numbers and strong in the high.
- Thompson's survey of highland towns
- Which numbers count as good or bad differs from town to town.
- Classic scribes
- Wrote 2 as two dots, or as a god's head: a god with a hand over his head, in Thompson's identification.
- Dreamspell (1990)
- Gives each number a name of its own in a different modern count; not used here.
- EsoTerrier
- Mild in our bands; keyword "pairing, duality". Our words, a reading aid.
Claims about it
-
The number 2 has a fixed traditional character.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: The highland reports give the numbers strength, low gentle and high strong; fixed characters per number are modern, and our own keyword is labelled as ours.
-
Two is one of thirteen cosmic "tones" with a Maya name.
falseWhat the record shows: The tone names are Dreamspell's, from 1990. The Maya count has numbers 1 to 13.
