B’en (Aj)
The thirteenth Maya day sign, the reed and the growing maize. K’iche’ daykeepers call the day Aj, the cane and the corn, and a day of triumph.
Meaning
B’en is the thirteenth of the twenty day signs of the 260-day count; in K’iche’ it is Aj. The Aztec day in the same place is Acatl, reed (see Aztec day signs). The K’iche’ daykeepers of Komon Tohil, in Zunil, Guatemala, in an account of the days that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian reproduces on its Living Maya Time site, derive Aj from “cane plantation” and “milpa”, the maize field, and write that Aj means corn and is a rod of virtues of divine power: a very meaningful day, “a day of triumph”.
Origin and history
Morley found the day rare on the monuments, but its carved form “practically identical” with the painted one: two upright posts above a band. Eric Thompson recorded that the K’iche’ give Aj both the meaning of green corn and of reed or cane, preferring reed; the Spanish caña in the old sources means cane or reed but specifically sugar cane, which he called a colonial change, since sugar cane was unknown in the Americas before the Spanish. The Yucatec word Ben itself, he found, has nothing to do with plants. He concluded that B’en was most likely the growing maize plant, where K’an is the ripe grain and the seed. Kettunen and Helmke leave the Classic Maya name blank.
Read next
- Next in Maya symbols and godsIx (I’x)The fourteenth Maya day sign, the jaguar: its three circles are the spots on a jaguar’s skin. K’iche’ daykeepers call the day I’x, the sacred name of divinity on Earth.
- The same shape in Andean and Inca symbolsGateway of the Sun (the Staff God)A doorway cut from a single block of andesite at Tiwanaku, near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, carved above the opening with a god holding a staff in each hand. Who the figure is remains open: Britannica lists a sun god, a thunder god and Viracocha among the readings.
See also
K’an (K’at), Kukulkan, Chaac, Itzamna, Maize God, Maya calendar.
Sources
- Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction (J. Eric S. Thompson, 1950), J. Eric S. Thompson, Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction, Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 589 (Washington, 1950), chapter 3, “The cycle of 260 days”; Internet Archive full text, Internet Archive, pp. 81–82, “Ben, Been, Ah”
- An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs (Sylvanus G. Morley, 1915), Sylvanus Griswold Morley, An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 57 (Smithsonian Institution, 1915), chapter III and figs. 16–17; Project Gutenberg eBook 43491, Project Gutenberg, chapter III, Table I; p. 40
- The Meaning of the Days in the Maya Sacred Calendar (Komon Tohil, Living Maya Time), Group of K’iche’ Day Keepers Komon Tohil, Zunil, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, “The Meaning of the Days in the Maya Sacred Calendar”, reproduced with permission in Living Maya Time, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (PDF), National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, p. 1, Aj
- Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs (Harri Kettunen and Christophe Helmke, Mesoweb, 2020), Harri Kettunen and Christophe Helmke, Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs, 17th revised edition (Wayeb and Mesoweb, 2020), Appendices, Tables X–XI, “Day names in the Tzolk’in calendar”, Mesoweb, Table XI
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from lines or squares and rectangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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