How many day signs are there in the Aztec tonalpohualli? There are 20 day signs.
The tonalpohualli was the Mexica ritual calendar, often translated as the “count of days.” It combined 20 repeating day signs with numbers from 1 through 13. Because 20 and 13 cycle together, the complete sequence contained 260 distinct day combinations.
The signs included Crocodile, Wind, House, Lizard, Serpent, Death, Deer, Rabbit, Water, Dog, Monkey, Grass, Reed, Jaguar, Eagle, Vulture, Earthquake, Flint, Rain, and Flower. Each combination could carry religious and divinatory significance, influencing interpretations of a person’s birth date or the character of a day.
The 20 signs are sometimes confused with the 18 twenty-day months of the separate 365-day solar calendar, the xiuhpohualli. The number 52 also belongs to the calendar system: after 52 solar years, the 260-day and 365-day cycles returned to the same combination. It is therefore not the number of tonalpohualli signs.