K’an (K’at)
The fourth Maya day sign, read by scholars as the ripe grain of maize. K’iche’ daykeepers call the day K’at, the net, and ask on it for a child to be born.
Meaning
K’an is the fourth of the twenty day signs of the 260-day count; in K’iche’ it is K’at. For Eric Thompson the key was the list of auguries in the Kaua manuscript, which calls the day “the lord of the maize grain”, and the codices, where young maize plants grow out of the K’an sign. The Yucatec word kan, he noted, means cord and any netted cord, and also yellow and so ripe. 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 K’at from “net”, “tangle” or “disentangle”, and make it the sign of fire and burning, the fishing net and the net that protects the corncobs. It is the day, they write, to ask for a child to be born.
Origin and history
Morley found the sign practically the same on the monuments and in the codices; Thompson called it a geometric design “too conventionalized to be any longer recognizable” as whatever it first showed. The Aztec day in the same place is Cuetzpalin, lizard, a sign of abundance, but at Meztitlan, on the edge of Huastec country, it was Xilotl, “the green ear of corn” (see Aztec day signs). In the codices the K’an sign often stands with offerings of food, and with the Imix sign in a pair that Gates read as food and drink. The Classic Maya name may have been quite different: Kettunen and Helmke give it, with a question mark, as Ohl.
A net in both readings
The Yucatec and K’iche’ readings meet in one place. Thompson gave Yucatec kan as cord and any netted cord; the Komon Tohil daykeepers give K’at as a net, among them the net that protects the corncobs, while scholars read the sign itself as the grain. The B’en page has the other maize day, the growing plant.
Read next
- Next in Maya symbols and godsChikchan (Kan)The fifth Maya day sign, the day of the serpent. Its glyph shows a snake’s crosshatched markings; K’iche’ daykeepers call the day Kan, the feathered serpent.
- 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
Imix (Imox), B’en (Aj), Maize God, Kukulkan, Chaac, Itzamna.
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. 75, “Kan, Cana, Kat”
- 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. 39
- 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. 3, K’at
- 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 X
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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