Chuwen (B’atz’)
The eleventh Maya day sign, the monkey and the craftsman. K’iche’ daykeepers call the day B’atz’, the thread of time, and hold their new year and initiate new daykeepers on it.
Meaning
Chuwen is the eleventh of the twenty day signs of the 260-day count, written Chuen by Morley and Thompson; in K’iche’ it is B’atz’. 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 B’atz’ from the word “thread”: the thread of time, people’s destiny and their continuity with the past. On this day, they write, the new year ceremonies celebrate the start of another cycle of 260 days, and new men and women daykeepers (Ajq’ijab’) are initiated. The Maya calendar page describes that ceremony, Wajxaqib’ B’atz’.
Origin and history
Eric Thompson made Chuwen the day of the monkey god and of the arts. In the K’iche’ Popol Vuh, 1 Chouen and 1 Batz are brothers named after their birth day, “great singers and orators, sculptors in high and low relief, writers of hieroglyphs”, whom their half-brothers, the hero twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque, send up a tree and turn into monkeys. Batz’ is the Maya name for the howling monkey; in Yucatec chuen means craftsman, and the Kaua manuscript gives the day’s augury as “Carpenter, weaver… Masters of all arts.” The Aztec day in the same place is Ozomatli, monkey (see Aztec day signs). Morley found only one carved example clear enough to read. Kettunen and Helmke leave the Classic Maya name blank.
Read next
- Next in Maya symbols and godsEb’ (E)The twelfth Maya day sign, a head whose mark is the element where the ear would be. Its names are read as stairway, tooth and path; K’iche’ daykeepers call the day E, the path.
- The same shape in Andean and Inca symbolsTumi (ceremonial knife)A ceremonial knife with a half-moon blade from the north coast of ancient Peru. The gold tumis of the Sicán (Lambayeque) culture carry a god on the handle, often identified as Naylamp, the dynasty’s mythical founder. The Tumi de Oro was declared a pre-Columbian symbol of Peru in 1981.
See also
Maya calendar, Kukulkan, Chaac, Itzamna, Maize God, Maya numerals (bar and dot).
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, p. 80, “Chuen, Batz”
- 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, B’atz’
- 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 curves and waves 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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