.“The Calendar Stone is also known as the Stone of the Sun. The calendar is a single piece of porphyry with a turned face. The Calendar Stone shown until 1560 and was then buried by order of the archbishop of Mexico City in case its presence should cause the Indians to revert to their original pagan beliefs. In 1790, it was rediscovered and built into the Cathedral until 1885. It was then moved to the nearby museum.
The Calendar Stone is not only a symbol of the sun’s face marked with the divisions of the year but it is a record of the cosmogonic myth of the Aztecs and the creations and destructions of the world. The sun god Tonatiuh is the center face of the calendar. This is often represented by a circle with four or more subdivisions resembling a compass, which represent the rays of the sun. The middle of the symbol is called Olin which is one of the day signs and means movement. This could be a representation of an earthquake and also a representation of the course of the sun during the year. According to Aztecan myth, the history of the world is divided into five suns or ages, four of which refer to the past and one to the present. The present sun is called Olin Tonatiuh because it is destined to be destroyed by an earthquake. The first year of the present sun in the year 13 Acatl is the top of the monument between the reptile tails. The Sacrificial Stone or Stone of Tizoc is believed to have been carved by order of Tizoc, the war chief who ruled from 1482-1486, as a memorial offering to Mexican arms on the completion of the great temple to the Mexican God of War.” [i] “This is less complex then the Calendar Stone but has similar parts. On the sides of the stone, there are fifteen groups of figures. Each group represents a conqueror and his captive. The Aztecs used a vigesimal system which is made up of numbers 1 to 19. This was used with a number of dots or circles. A dot was used for each unit through 19, a flag represented 20, a feather represented 400, and a bag of copal incense represented 8000. Symbols were used to represent greater quantities. The Aztecs did not have a sign for the number zero. They did not use position of numerals. The Aztecs also used symbols for the 20 day signs. They used an eighteen month cycle with five remaining days. At the end of the 52 year cycle, the New Fire Ceremony took place. This was a nighttime ceremony where they would watch for the passage of the Pleiades across the center of the heavens, which would announce the continuation of the world for another 52 years. When this occurred, a victim was sacrificed by cutting a slit in his chest and pulling out his heart. They also used a Venus cycle of 584 days. Eight solar years equaled five Venus periods. When 104 years were completed, the 584-day Venus period, the 365-day solar year, and the 52 year cycle all coincided.” [ii]
