Manik’ (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.
Meaning
Manik’ is the seventh of the twenty day signs of the 260-day count; in K’iche’ it is Kej. Eric Thompson called it “one of the most puzzling of all days”. The Aztec day in the same place is Mazatl, deer (see Aztec day signs), and so are the highland names Ceh and Cieh, but the Yucatec name has no known meaning and the glyph is a hand. 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 Kej from “deer”, and write that it is one of the four supports of the sky and the earth, the force that carries the destinies of humankind, and the four corners of the earth, which they name in K’iche’ as Tojil, Avilix, Aja Bitz and Majukutaj.
Origin and history
The glyph is a hand seen from the side, the thumb touching or held out from one finger; Morley found it practically the same on the monuments and in the codices. Thompson thought the highland deer names might be a late borrowing from Mexico, since neither the Yucatec name nor the hand has anything to do with deer. He noted that among the Jacalteca the day’s augury is an abundance of animals, and argued, from scenes in the Madrid Codex where scorpions with hand-tipped tails rope deer, that Manik’ was the day of a god of hunting “whose symbol was the scorpion”. He introduced that case as “the evidence, such as it is”. Kettunen and Helmke give the Classic Maya name, with a question mark, as Chij.
One of the four year bearers
Manik’ is one of the four days that can begin a year. Morley lists them as Ik, Manik, Eb and Caban (Ik’, Manik’, Eb’ and Kab’an), and Wagley, cited by Thompson, recorded the year bearers at the Mam village of Santiago Chimaltenango as Ik, Cheh, Ek and Noh. The deer has its own page.
Read next
- Next in Maya symbols and godsLamat (Q’anil)The eighth Maya day sign, a four-pointed star: the sign for the planet Venus. K’iche’ daykeepers call the day Q’anil, the seed.
- In the highlands the day is Kej, the deerDeer symbolismIn Christian legend a stag with a crucifix between its antlers turned the hunters Eustace and Hubert to God; in Buddhist art two deer beside the wheel of the teaching recall the Deer Park where the Buddha first taught. Cherokee hunters asked pardon of the Little Deer, chief of the deer, for every deer they killed.
See also
Ik’ (Iq’), Eb’ (E), Kukulkan, Chaac, Itzamna, Maize God.
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. 76–77, “Manik, Moxic, Che, Ceh, Cieh”
- 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; pp. 40 and 53
- 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, Kej
- 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 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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