Eb

Eb is the twelfth of the twenty day signs of the Tzolk'in, the 260-day sacred count of the Maya, kept by living daykeepers and reconstructed for the Classic period from the inscriptions. Recorded here by its Yucatec name, Eb, it corresponds to the day E in the living K'iche' tradition. Its imagery is the road or path and the grass, the road of life a person walks, and the theme of service, of being the one who carries and provides for others. It is associated with the journey, destiny, and humility. In the directional scheme that runs through the twenty signs it belongs to the south and the colour yellow. These are the meanings the Maya calendrical tradition carries for the day, presented as that living and reconstructed tradition frames them.

Eb is the twelfth of the twenty Tzolk'in day signs; the living K'iche' tradition knows the corresponding day as E, a name connected to the road or path, matching the Yucatec sign's own association with the human being, service and the path a life follows. In the directional scheme, Eb belongs to the south and the colour yellow, closing the third of the five four-day directional sets. Contemporary K'iche' daykeepers read an E day as governing destiny and the individual's road through life, a reading some practitioners connect to the day's position as, in certain regional traditions, an auspicious day for beginning journeys or new undertakings, though such specific practical associations vary between highland Guatemalan communities and are not uniform across all daykeeping lineages.

Eb is the Yucatec form of the twelfth sign; the K'iche' name is simply E. Both are glossed as road or path, and Yucatec sources also give a reading of tooth. The Classic glyph is one of the group that epigraphers read with reference to the road and to the journey.

In central Mexico the twelfth position is Malinalli, twisted grass, and this is another of the places where the imagery does not carry across. Twisted grass and the road are not the same picture, though both suggest something extended and laid along the ground, and the divergence belongs with Akbal against Calli and Cib against Cozcacuauhtli as evidence that the sequence was translated rather than simply transmitted.

Eb is a Year Bearer. It is one of the four the Classic inscriptions use, Ik, Manik, Eb and Kaban, and it remains one of the four the highland Maya communities use today under the names Iq', Kej, E and No'j. The Postclassic Yucatec system Diego de Landa recorded used a different set, Kan, Muluc, Ix and Kawak, so a reader comparing colonial Yucatan with modern Guatemala is comparing two conventions and not two calendars.

The bearer sets are worth stating as arithmetic rather than as lore. A Haab year of 365 days advances the Tzolk'in sign by five positions each year, because 365 leaves a remainder of five on division by twenty, so a bearer set is any four signs spaced five apart, and there are exactly five such sets in the twenty. Which of the five a community uses is convention, and the Classic, Yucatec and central Mexican traditions each chose differently.