Overview
- Researchers published a peer‑reviewed Antiquity paper in July 2026 that decodes Text 19 from a painted chamber at Xultun and reads a penultimate glyph meaning “so says” followed by the name Sak Tahn Waax, translated as “White‑chested Fox.”
- The decoded sequence is a compact mathematical‑astronomical formula that equates a 2,920‑day span (five Venus synodic cycles) to multiple Maya time units, including the 260‑day ritual count, the 365‑day solar year, a 584‑day Venus cycle and a 780‑day Mars approximation.
- The inscription was one of roughly 50–52 short mathematical microtexts painted on the chamber plaster, and associated finds such as papermaking tools and scribal imagery support interpreting the room as a workshop or draft space for codex production.
- Authors and Guatemala’s Ministry of Culture present the name as the first direct personal attribution to a Classic Maya astronomer‑mathematician, but they caution that further handwriting and comparative epigraphic analysis is needed to show whether Sak Tahn Waax wrote the formula, lived at Xultun, or was being quoted.
- Beyond naming an individual, the find reframes Maya intellectual life by showing scribal crediting of technical work and will prompt follow‑up study of the other microtexts to test authorship, trace links to later codices such as the Dresden Codex, and clarify how these calculations shaped ritual and political timing.