Page 21	Page 22

Pages 20 and 21 of  a Maya glyph book, the Paris Codex, illustrate fantastic beasts suspendeed from a "sky band", which represents the ecliptic (the path of he sun and planets against the background of fixed stars).  Most scholars believe these pages are a Maya zodiac.

The "dot and bar" numbers below each beast is a count of 168 days between each constellation. The Codex thus appears to record the constellations in which the sun stands at 168 day intervals.  Linda Schele found evidence she believed supports this interpretation on the Hauberg Stela, which seems to illustrate several of the constellation beasts in the order they appear in the sky where the ecliptic crosses the Milky Way.    She argues that the Hauberg Stela represents the "raising of the sky" at Creation, and suggests that the Paris Codex "records the laying out of the constellations" along the ecliptic at intervals of  168 days immediately after Creation.

However,  some other students of the Codex doubt Schele's interpretation.  Bruce Love doubts that the constellations illustrated in the Codex can be interpreted as a zodiac.  Victoria Bricker believes the Codex illustrates a zodiac, but argues that the constellations represent those opposite the sun at 168 day intervals. When opposite the sun, a constellation will be high in  the sky at midnight.
 

Maya Zodiac References and Links
 

Linda Schele, David Freidel, and Joy Parker, Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path, William Morrow and Company, 1993 Includes Schele's interpretation of the Maya zodiac

Khristaan D. Villela and Linda Schele, "Astronomy and the Iconography of Creation Among the Classic and Colonial Period Maya" (Eighth Palenque Round Table, 1993)  Full discussion of Schele's interpretation of the Maya zodiac in a scholarly article on-line at Mesoweb

Victoria Bricker and Harvey M. Bricker,  "Zodiacal References in the Maya Codices", in Anthony F. Aveni, ed. The Sky in
Mayan Literature. Oxford, 1992.

Bruce Love, The Paris Codex:  Handbook for a Maya Priest, University of Texas Press,1994.

About the Maya Codices (at this web site)