Maya records of planetary conjunctions in Dresden Codex

• Published in: Serbian astronomical journal. 2024-01, Vol.2024 (208), p.47-56
• Main Authors: Vondrak, J, Bohm, V, Bohm, B
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Eclipses; ephemerides; history and philosophy of astronomy
• ISSN: 1450-698X; 1820-9289
• DOI: 10.2298/SAJ2408047V

Old Mayas designed a very complicated calendar, and they also recorded important historical events and astronomical phenomena. Dresden Codex (DC), one of the four preserved Mayan hieroglyphic literal legacies, contains many of these, covering the classical period of Maya history. The records of these events in DC are given in the so-called Long Count (LC), the number of days elapsed from the origin of Maya chronology. The difference between LC and Julian Date, used in today's astronomy, is traditionally called correlation. More than fifty different values of the correlation have been published so far, and the differences among them can reach up to several centuries. The value, mostly accepted by Maya historians, is the one by Goodman-Mart?ez-Thompson (GMT), equal to 584 283 days. It is based mostly on events extracted from sources of the post-classical period of Maya history. Brothers B?hm used Maya astronomical records to derive the B?hm correlation (BB) of 622 261 days. It is in excellent agreement with the dates of astronomical phenomena recorded in DC. During past decades we published several papers supporting validity of the BB correlation. They are based on the records of different astronomical phenomena in DC and stelae, such as solar eclipses, planetary conjunctions, greatest elongations of Mercury and Venus from the Sun, or heliacal risings and settings. The present study is devoted to newly found recorded dates on page D74 of Dresden Codex. We were able to identify six of them with conjunctions of planets Venus through Saturn (corresponding to years 491, 495, 496, 501, 531, and 571), when BB correlation was applied.