Mixtec codex online – codex card generator
Mixtec codex – combine a number with one of 20 day signs to form a calendar name. Explore the famous example of Eight Deer.
260 combinations of 13 numbers and 20 day signs
Why were Mixtec people named after a calendar date?
The Mixtec ritual calendar did more than count days — it also supplied names. A name taken from a date stayed with a person for life, and it was how people were identified in the codices: a number joined to a day sign within a cycle of 260 days. The most famous example is the ruler 8 Deer, known additionally by the nickname “Jaguar Claw”.
How is this calendar built?
The ritual cycle combines the numbers 1 to 13 with 20 day signs. Both runs advance together, so the same pair returns only after 260 days — and that is exactly the length of the whole cycle. In the tool you choose a number and a sign, and their combination forms a complete calendar name.
Example: 8 Deer
Pick the number 8 and the day sign “deer” and you get the name borne by the ruler of Tututepec, the protagonist of several codices. Changing only the number creates a different calendar name while keeping the same day sign. You can try any combination with the working tool above.
The twenty day signs
The top row gives the sign’s position in the cycle and the bottom row its name. The order is fixed and repeats endlessly, while each sign meets the numbers 1 to 13 in turn along the way.
| Position | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day sign | alligator | wind | house | lizard | serpent | death | deer | rabbit | water | dog | monkey | grass | reed | jaguar | eagle | vulture | movement | flint | rain | flower |
Why exactly 260 days?
The number 260 is 13 times 20, the result of interlocking both cycles. This count was used across Mesoamerica, and its rhythm governed festival dates, divination and decisions about when to act. Alongside it ran a solar year of 365 days, and the two cycles were combined in longer reckonings.
How were namesakes told apart?
With only 260 combinations in the cycle, people sharing a calendar name were inevitable. Codices could supplement the name with an epithet such as “Jaguar Claw”, or distinguish a person through lineage, deeds and their place in the narrative. The full context, rather than the calendar name alone, identified a specific figure.
See also: Nahuatl glyphs · Maya numerals
History and interesting facts
Mixtec codices were pictorial screenfold books made, among other materials, on prepared animal skin. Through people, places, dates and name signs they recorded genealogies, marriages, alliances, wars and dynastic histories. The name Eight Deer came from a birth date in the 260-day cycle that combined 13 numbers with 20 signs. The eleventh-to-twelfth-century ruler Eight Deer Jaguar Claw is a central figure in the Codex Zouche-Nuttall and other Mixtec manuscripts.
What this tool does not do
The generator pairs a number with a day sign and stops there: it does not convert dates to the modern calendar, does not draw full codex scenes and does not supply nicknames. Nor does it reproduce the painted style of the manuscripts — the colours, the frames or the boustrophedon reading order of the pages.
The Mixtec codices
The dynastic history of the Oaxaca region is known from manuscripts painted on deerskin and folded like a screen. They include the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, the Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus I and the Codex Colombino-Becker, where the life of 8 Deer fills dozens of pages. These are among the few Mesoamerican books that survived the conquest and let us read pre-conquest history.