Plates 49,50,51,52 and half of 53

This is descriptive but I cannot yet offer a reading of these plates.

The commentaries in my Dover edition of Codex Borgia identifies these paintings by use of the five illustrations which each contain a tree. I am exploring an interpretation that uses the icons as basic information.

These plates have complex organization which leads me to another method of organizing the icons that were presented on Plates 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, and 8 where they were presented in four rows of 54 icons in each row.

I now notice a potential organization into 20 columns with the first 15 columns containing 13 icons each but the last 5 columns containing only 14 icons each. This follows prior conventions to replace the dot with an icon in sequence from the list of 20 icons. This organization would contain 255 icons instead of 260 as the first presentation of a calendar, called the ritual year. This organization does not include the additional information from the top quadrants of the five plates.

There are alternate readings which utilize the icons displayed at the top row of icons. Observe that each top row of icons repeats an icon from the bottom row. This can be read in alternate #1 as a sign to replace the row if icons designated by the Red dot Alternate #2 is to insert three icons in the list prescribed by the dots.

Alternate reading #1 replaces a column of 15 dots with three icons in Plates 49,50,51, and 52. It is not yet clear what happens in replacing Tochtli on Plate 52; it is replaced by Atl and Itzquintli but the observation of Plate 53 is not clear. This alternate reading #1 shows 13 icons on each of the four major columns of Plates 49,50,51 and 52; then 3 or more in replacing one icon on each Plate. This gives a minimum of 4x13+3=55 on each plate or a total of 220 on the complete set of icons. Alternate reading #1 does not correspond with any major cycles to my knowledge so it is rejected.

The sequence of 20 icons is well established so I will attempt to use the upper parts of these Plates to add icons somewhere. The most obvious reading is to count one icon per lunar cycle. This would yield 255x13 lunations. Modern astronomy says there are 29.53058 days per lunar cycle, yielding 260x29.53058=7677.9508 days. There are 52x265.2422=13792.5944 days in the well known 52 year cycle, more than would be counted by counting lunar cycles.

One iconis missing from each row reconstructed from these plates. This is a ratio of
52/51=1.102
52x13=676 lunar cucles in 52 years
13x29.53058=354.3696 days is 13 lunar cycles
354.3696/356.25/354.37=1.0053