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"Maya Constellations" Cylinder for Portable Planetariums
 
More Important Topics of Maya Constellations Cylinder

This cylinder was developed for educational activities into a Portable Planetarium by the Digital Team of Portable Planetariums Home. The images are based in the pages 21 and 22 of Paris Codex. We consider it as a fundamental contribution to understand the Mayan Zodiac Constellations. Images in this cylinder are delivered in the public domain and are not subject to copyright restrictions. However requests users to cite this URL (Portable Planetariums Home Company) and the Northwestern University Library if they wish to reproduce files from its digitized documents collection. The third Maya codex that unequivocally contains an astronomical table is the Paris Codex. This incomplete document includes what appears to be a Maya zodiac. Fantastic animals representing constellations along the sun's path about the sky hang from a "sky band", which represents the ecliptic in Classical inscriptions and the codices. The Codex illustrates thirteen constellations along the ecliptic (one more than the twelve in the Old World zodiac). The constellations are apparently not illustrated in the order they appear in the heavens. Instead, each illustration is separated from the next by a count of 168 days. Although most scholars identify these pages in the Codex as a zodiac, some are not convinced. They agree that the Codex likely depicts constellations, but argue that the Maya did not conceive a "zodiac" in the Old World sense.

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