STUDIES
IN
CENTRAL AMERICAN PICTURE-WRITING.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

STUDIES IN CENTRAL AMERICAN PICTURE-WRITING.

My programme at beginning was, first, to see if the inscriptions at Copan and Palenque were written in the same tongue. When I say “to see,” I mean to definitely prove the fact, and so in other cases; second, to see how the tablets were to be read. That is, in horizontal lines, are they to be read from right to left, or the reverse? In vertical columns, are they to be read up or down? Third, to see whether they were phonetic characters, or merely ideographic, or a mixture of the two—rebus-like, in fact.

If the characters turned out to be purely phonetic, I had determined to stop at this point, since I had not the time to learn the Maya language, and again because I utterly and totally distrusted the methods which, up to this time, have been applied by Brasseur de Bourbourg and others who start, and must start, from the misleading and unlucky alphabet handed down by Landa. I believe that legacy to have been a positive misfortune, and I believe any process of the kind attempted by Brasseur de Bourbourg (for example, in his essay on the MS. Troano) to be extremely dangerous and difficult in application, and to require a degree of scientific caution almost unique.

Dr. Harrison Allen, in his paper, “The Life Form in Art,” in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, is the only investigator who has applied this method to Central American remains with success, so it seems to me; and even here errors have occurred.

The process I allude to is something like the following: A set of characters, say the alphabet of Landa, is taken as a starting point. The variants of these are formed. Then the basis of the investigation is ready. From this, the interpretation follows by identifications of each new character with one of the standard set or with one of its variants. Theoretically, there is no objection to this procedure. Practically, also, there is no objection if the work is done strictly in the order named. In fact, however, the list of variants is filled out not before the work is begun, but during its progress, and in such a way as to satisfy the necessities of the interpreter in carrying out some preconceived idea. With a sufficient latitude in the choice of variants any MS. can receive any interpretation. For example, the MS. Troano, which a casual examination leads me to think is a ritual, and an account of the adventures of several Maya gods, is interpreted by Brasseur de Bourbourg as a record of mighty geologic changes. It is next to impossible to avoid errors of this nature at least, and in fact they have not been avoided, so far as I know, except by Dr. Allen in the paper cited.

I, personally, have chosen the stones and not the manuscripts for study largely because variants do not exist in the same liberal degree in the stone inscriptions as they have been supposed to exist in the manuscripts.

At any one ruin the characters for the same idea are alike, and alike to a marvelous degree. At another ruin the type is just a little different, but the fidelity to this type is equally great. Synonyms exist; that is, the same idea may be given by two or more utterly different signs. But a given sign is made in a fixed and definite way. Finally the MSS. are, I think, later than the stones. Hence the root of the matter is the interpretation of the stones, or not so much their full interpretation as the discovery of a method of interpretation, which shall be sure.

Suppose, for example, that we know the meaning of a dozen characters only, and the way a half dozen of these are joined together in a sentence. The method by which these were obtained will serve to add others to the list, and progress depends in such a case only on our knowledge of the people who wrote, and of the subjects upon which they were writing. Such knowledge and erudition belongs to the archæologists by profession. A step that might take me a year to accomplish might be made in an instant by one to whom the Maya and Aztec mythology was familiar, if he were proceeding according to a sound method. At the present time we know nothing of the meaning of any of the Maya hieroglyphs.

It will, therefore, be my object to go as far in the subject as I can proceed with certainty, every step being demonstrated so that not only the archæologist but any intelligent person can follow. As soon as the border-land is reached in which proof disappears and opinion is the only guide, the search must be abandoned except by those whose cultivated and scientific opinions are based on knowledge far more profound and various than I can pretend or hope to have.

If I do not here push my own conclusions to their farthest limit, it must not be assumed that I do not see, at least in some cases, the direction in which they lead. Rather, let this reticence be ascribed to a desire to lay the foundations of a new structure firmly, to prescribe the method of building which my experience has shown to be adequate and necessary, and to leave to those abler than myself the erection of the superstructure. If my methods and conclusions are correct (and I have no doubts on this point, since each one has been reached in various ways and tested by a multiplicity of criteria) there is a great future to these researches. It is not to be forgotten that here we have no Rosetta stone to act at once as key and criterion, and that instead of the accurate descriptions of the Egyptian hieroglyphics which were handed down by the Greek cotemporaries of the sculptors of these inscriptions, we have only the crude and brutal chronicles of an ignorant Spanish soldiery, or the bigoted accounts of an unenlightened priesthood. To Cortez and his companions a memorandum that it took one hundred men all day to throw the idols into the sea was all-sufficient. To the Spanish priests the burning of all manuscripts was praiseworthy, since those differing from Holy Writ were noxious and those agreeing with it superfluous. It is only to the patient labor of the Maya sculptor who daily carved the symbols of his belief and creed upon enduring stone, and to the luxuriant growths of semi-tropical forests which concealed even these from the passing Spanish adventurer, that we owe the preservation of the memorials of past beliefs and vanished histories.

Not the least of the pleasures of such researches as these comes from the recollection that they vindicate the patience and skill of forgotten men, and make their efforts not quite useless. It was no rude savage that carved the Palenque cross; and if we can discover what his efforts meant, his labor and his learning have not been all in vain. It will be one more proof that human effort, even misdirected, is not lost, but that it comes, later or earlier, “to forward the general deed of man.”

II.
MATERIALS FOR THE PRESENT INVESTIGATION.

My examination of the works of Mr. J. L. Stephens has convinced me that in every respect his is the most trustworthy work on the hieroglyphs of Central America. The intrinsic evidence to this effect is very strong, but when I first became familiar with the works of Waldeck I found so many points of difference that my faith was for a time shaken, and I came to the conclusion that while the existing representations might suffice for the study of the general forms of statues, tablets, and buildings, yet they were not sufficiently accurate in detail to serve as a basis for the deciphering I had in mind. I am happy to bear witness, however, that Stephens’s work is undoubtedly amply adequate to the purpose, and this fact I have laboriously verified by a comparison of it with various representations, as those of Desaix and others, and also with a few photographs. The drawings of Waldeck are very beautiful and artistic, but either the artist himself or his lithographers have taken singular liberties in the published designs. Stephens’s work is not only accurate, but it contains sufficient material for my purpose (over 1,500 separate hieroglyphs), and, therefore, I have based my study exclusively upon his earliest work, “Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan,” 2 vols., 8vo. New York, 1842 (twelfth edition). I have incidentally consulted the works on the subject contained in the Library of Congress, particularly those of Brasseur de Bourbourg, Kingsborough, Waldeck, and others, but, as I have said, the two volumes above named contain all the the material I have been able to utilize, and much more which is still under examination.

At Palenque the type (font) changes, but the adherence to this is equally or almost equally rigid. It is to be presumed that in this latter case, where work was done both in stone and stucco, the nature of the material affected the portraiture more or less.

The stone statues at Copan, for example, could not all have been done by the same artist, nor at the same time. I have elsewhere shown that two of these statues are absolutely identical. How was this accomplished? Was one stone taken to the foot of the other and cut by it as a pattern? This is unlikely, especially as in the case mentioned the scale of the two statues is quite different. I think it far more likely that each was cut from a drawing, or series of drawings, which must have been preserved by priestly authority. The work at any one place must have required many years, and could not have been done by a single man; nor is it probable that it was all done in one generation. Separate hieroglyphs must have been preserved in the same way. It is this rigid adherence to a type, and the banishment of artistic fancy, which will allow of progress in the deciphering of the inscriptions or the comparison of the statues. Line after line, ornament after ornament, is repeated with utter fidelity. The reason of this is not far to seek. This, however, is not the place to explain it, but rather to take advantage of the fact itself. We may fairly say that were it not so, and with our present data, all advances would be tenfold more difficult.

III.
SYSTEM OF NOMENCLATURE.

This method of naming the chiffres, then, is a quick and safe one, and we shall see that it lends itself to the uses required of it.

I add here the scheme according to which the principal plates at Palenque have been numbered.

PLATE XXIV (left-hand side).

PLATE XXIV (right-hand side).

PLATE LII.

PLATE LIII.

[The upper left-hand square is No. 500, the upper right is 519, the lower left-hand is 720, the lower right is 739. All the squares from 500 to 508, 520 to 528, 530 to 538, etc., up to 720 to 728, are obliterated (and their numbers omitted here) except a few.]

PLATE LIV.

PLATE LVI (left-hand side—Palenque Cross).