The year and its days
Three hundred and sixty-five, the five left outside, and the leap-year argument
What it covers
How the Mexica solar year was built, what the five nemontemi were, and why whether it had a leap day is still argued.
The full entry is in Spanish, and here is why
What you have read above is this project's own summary of the year and its days. The full entry — the part that rests on the sixteenth-century sources — has not been translated, and that is a decision rather than an omission.
We chose not to touch the primary text. Those sections quote Sahagún, Durán and the codices in their own words, often in sixteenth-century Castilian. A quotation carried across stops being a quotation: it loses the register, the ambiguity and the exact wording someone might want to check against a facsimile.
In Spanish the entry carries:
- La cuenta del año
- Los cinco que quedan fuera
- El pleito del bisiesto
Read the full entry in the original Spanish → Nahuatl names and terms are identical in both versions.
How to cite this page
Alma Mexica, «The year and its days», The documents. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/document/en-claro-el-ano/