Kimi (Kame)
The sixth Maya day sign, the day of death, drawn as the skull of the death god. K’iche’ daykeepers call it Kame and say it holds both the good and the bad.
Meaning
Kimi is the sixth of the twenty day signs of the 260-day count, written Cimi by Morley and Thompson; in K’iche’ it is Kame. Eric Thompson found almost every source agreed in connecting the day with death. The Yucatec name shares a root with cimil, “to die”, the augural animal of the day is the cuz owl, which in Maya belief was an omen of death, and the Aztec day in the same place is Miquiztli, death (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, also derive Kame from “death”, and write that it encompasses the good and the bad, that it is the nawal of the Sun, and that it means death and the owl that announces it from the trees. On Kame, they write, people ask to be free of bad choices and accidents.
Origin and history
The day’s head form is a skull, the head of the death god; its plain form is the death gods’ mark that Thompson called “the peculiar percentage sign”. Morley found the carved and painted forms little alike. In the K’iche’ Popol Vuh the lords of Xibalba, the underworld, are 1 Came and 7 Came. Kettunen and Helmke give the Classic Maya name, with a question mark, as Cham.
A day of death, not an unlucky day
Thompson was surprised that a day of death was “considered lucky in one respect or another” by the K’iche’, the Ixil and the people of Santa Eulalia. The Komon Tohil account puts it in its own terms: Kame is death, and it holds the good and the bad together. The owl has its own page.
Read next
- Next in Maya symbols and godsManik’ (Kej)The seventh Maya day sign, a hand shown from the side. In the highlands the day is Kej, the deer, which K’iche’ daykeepers count among the four supports of the sky and the earth.
- The cuz owl, an omen of death, is the bird of the day KimiOwl symbolismThe bird of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, stamped on the coins of Athens, and in Hindu art the vahana, or animal vehicle, of the goddess Lakshmi. In Roman and English belief, and in Cherokee and North Carolina folk belief as it was recorded, its cry at night was a warning of death or evil.
See also
Kukulkan, Chaac, Itzamna, Maize God, Maya calendar, 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, pp. 75–76, “Cimi, Tox, Came, Camel”
- 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. 3, Kame
- 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 circles 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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