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

IV.
IN WHAT ORDER ARE THE HIEROGLYPHS READ?

Take, for example, the right-hand side of the Palenque cross tablet as given by Rau. See our figure 48, which is Plate LVI of Stephens (vol. ii, p. 345), with the addition of the part now in the National Museum at Washington.

Our system of numbering is here

Now pick out the duplicate hieroglyphs in this; that is, run through the tablet, and wherever 2020 occurs erase the number which fills the place and write in 2020. Do the same for 2021, 2022, etc., down to 3084. The result will be as follows:

RIGHT-HAND SIDE OF PALENQUE CROSS TABLET (Rau).

Here the first two lines are unchanged. In the third line we find that 2043 is the same as 2025, 2044=2020, 2045=2021, and so on, and we write the smallest number in each case.

After this is done, connect like pairs by braces whenever they are consecutive, either vertical or horizontal. Take the pair 2020 and 2021 for example; 2020 occurs eight times in the tablet, viz, as 2020, 2044, 2072, 2081, 3023, 3061, 3072, 3084. In five out of the eight cases, it is followed by 2021, viz, as 2021, 2045, 2073, 3073, 3085.

It is clear this is not the result of accident. The pair 2020 and 2021 means something, and when the two characters occur together they must be read together. There is no point of punctuation between them. We also learn that they are not inseparable. 2020 will make sense with 2082, 3024 and 3062. Here it looks as if the writing must be read in lines horizontally. We do not know yet in which direction.

We must examine other cases. This is to be noticed: If the reading is in horizontal lines from left to right, then the progress is from top to bottom in columns, as the case of 3035 and 3040 shows. This occurs at the end of a line, and the corresponding chiffre required to make the pair is at the other end of the next line. I have marked this case with asterisks. If we must read in the lines from right to left we must necessarily read in columns from bottom to top. Thus the lines are connected.

A similar process with all the other tablets in Stephens leads to the conclusion that the reading is in lines horizontally and in columns vertically. The cases 1835-’45, 1885-’95, 1914-’24, and 1936-’46 should, however, be examined. We have now to decide at which end of the lines to begin. The reasons given by Mr. Bancroft (Native Races, vol. ii, p. 782) appeared to me sufficient to decide the question before I was acquainted with his statement of them.

Therefore, the sum total of our present data, examined by a rational method, leads to the conclusion, so far as we can know from these data, that the verbal sense proceeded in lines from left to right, in columns from top to bottom; just as the present page is written, in fact.

For the present, the introduction of the method here indicated is the important step. It has, as yet, been applied only to the plates of Stephens’ work. The definite conclusion should be made to rest on all possible data, some of which is not at my disposition at present. Tablets exist in great numbers at other points besides Palenque, and for the final conclusion these must also be consulted. If each one is examined in the way I have indicated, it will yield a certain answer. The direction of reading for that plate can be thus determined. At Palenque the progress is in the order I have indicated.

V.
THE CARD-CATALOGUE OF HIEROGLYPHS.

This was first done in my private copy of the work. I then procured another copy and duplicated these numbers both for plates and single chiffres. The plates of this copy were then cut up into single hieroglyphs and each single hieroglyph was mounted on a library card, as follows:

The cards were 6.5 by 4.5 inches. The chiffre was pasted on, in the center of the top space. Its number and the plate from which it came were placed as in the cut. The numbers of hieroglyphs which resembled the one in question could be written on the right half of the card, and the numbers corresponding to different recurrences of this hieroglyph occupied the left half.

All this part of the work was most faithfully and intelligently performed for me by Miss Mary Lockwood, to whom I desire to express the full amount of my obligations. A mistake in any part would have been fatal. But no mistakes occurred.

These cards could now be arranged in any way I saw fit. The simple chiffres, for example, could be placed so as to bring like ones together. A compound hieroglyph could be placed among simple ones agreeing with any one of its components, and so on.

The expense of forming this card catalogue of about 1,500 single hieroglyphs was borne by the Ethnological Bureau of the Smithsonian Institution, and the catalogue is the property of that bureau, forming only one of its many rich collections of American picture-writings.

VI.
COMPARISON OF PLATES I AND IV (COPAN).

In examining the various statues at Copan, as given by Stephens, one naturally looks for points of striking resemblance or striking difference. Where all is unknown, even the smallest sign is examined, in the hope that it may prove a clue. The Plate I, Fig. 49, has a twisted knot (the “square knot” of sailors) of cords over its head, and above this is a chiffre composed of ellipses, and above this again a sign like a sea-shell. A natural suggestion was that these might be the signs for the name of the personage depicted in Plate I. If this is so and we should find the same sign elsewhere in connection with a figure, we should expect to find this second figure like the first in every particular. This would be a rigid test of the theory. After looking through the Palenque series, and finding no similar figure and sign, I examined the Copan series, and in Plate IV, our Fig. 50, I found the same signs exactly; i. e., the knot and the two chiffres.

At first sight there is only the most general resemblance between the personages represented in the two plates; as Stephens says in his original account of them, they are “in many respects similar.” If he had known them to be the same, he would not have wasted his time in drawing them. The scale of the two drawings and of the two statues is different; but the two personages are the same identically. Figure for figure, ornament for ornament, they correspond. It is unnecessary to give the minute comparison here in words. It can be made by any one from the two plates herewith. Take any part of Plate I, find the corresponding part of Plate IV, and whether it is human feature or sculptured ornament the two will be found to be the same.

Take the middle face depending from the belt in each plate. The earrings are the same; the ornament below the chin, the knot above the head, the complicated beadwork on each side of this face, all are the same. The bracelets of the right arms of the main figures have each the forked serpent tongue, and the left-arm bracelets are ornamented alike. The crosses with beads almost inclosed in the right hands are alike; the elliptic ornaments above each wrist, the knots and chiffres over the serpent masks which surmount the faces, all are the same. In the steel plates given by Stephens there are even more coindences to be seen than in the excellent wood-cuts here given, which have been copied from them.

Here, then, is an important fact. The theory that the chiffre over the forehead is characteristic, though it is not definitively proved, receives strong confirmation. The parts which have been lost by the effects of time on one statue can be supplied from the other. Better than all, we gain a test of the minuteness with which the sculptors worked, and an idea of how close the adherence to a type was required to be. Granting once that the two personages are the same (a fact about which I conceive there can be no possible doubt, since the chances in favor are literally thousands to one), we learn what license was allowed, and what synonyms in stone might be employed. Thus, the ornament suspended from the neck in Plate IV is clearly a tiger’s skull. That from the neck of Plate I has been shown to be the derived form of a skull by Dr. Harrison Allen,225-* and we now know that this common form relates not to the human skull, as Dr. Allen has supposed, but to that of the tiger. We shall find this figure often repeated, and the identification is of importance. This is a case in regard to synonyms. The kind of symbolism so ably treated by Dr. Allen is well exemplified in the conventional sign for the crotalus jaw at the mouth of the mask over the head of each figure. This is again found on the body of the snake in Plate LX, and in other places. Other important questions can be settled by comparison of the two plates. For example, at Palenque we often find a sign composed of a half ellipse, inside of which bars are drawn. Half-circle with 3 lines drawn across I shall elsewhere show that there is reason to believe the ellipse is to represent the concave of the sky, its diameter to be the level earth, and in some cases at least the bars to be the descending and fertilizing rain. The bars are sometimes two, three, and sometimes four in number. Are these variants of a single sign, or are they synonyms? Before the discovery of the identity of the personages in these two plates, this question could not be answered. Now we can say that they are not synonyms, or at least that they must be considered separately. To show this, examine the bands just above the wristlets of the two figures. Over the left hands of the figures the bars are two in number; over the right hands there are four. This exact similarity is not accidental; there is a meaning in it, and we must search for its explanation elsewhere, but we now have a valuable test of what needs to be regarded, and of what, on the other hand, may be passed over as accidental or unimportant.

One other case needs mentioning here, as it will be of future use. From the waist of each figure depend nine oval solids, six being hatched over like pine cones and the three central ones having two ovals, one within the other, engraved on them. In Plate IV the inner ovals are all on the right-hand side of the outer ovals. Would they mean the same if they were on the left-hand side? Plate I enables us to say that they would, since one of these inner ovals has been put by the artist on that side by accident or by an allowed caprice. It is by furnishing us with tests and criteria like these that the proof of the identity of these two plates is immediately important. In other ways, too, the proof is valuable and interesting, but we need not discuss them at this time.

These statues, then, are to us a dictionary of synonyms in stone—a test of the degree of adherence to a prototype which was exacted, and a criterion of the kind of minor differences which must be noticed in any rigid study.

I have not insisted more on the resemblances, since the accompanying figures present a demonstration. Let those who wish to verify these resemblances compare minutely the ornaments above the knees of the two figures, those about the waists, above the heads, and the square knots, etc., etc.

VII.
ARE THE HIEROGLYPHS OF COPAN AND PALENQUE IDENTICAL?

The mask has been changed into the ball and hooks; the angular nose ornament into a single ball, easier to make and quite as significant to the Maya priest. But to us the older (Copan) figure is infinitely more significant. The curious rows of little balls which are often placed at the left-hand edge of the various chiffres are also conventions for older forms. It is to be noted that these balls always occur on the left hand of the hieroglyphs, except in one case, the chiffre 1975 in the Palenque cross tablet, on which the left-hand acolyte stands.

The conclusion that the two series are both written on the same system, and that like chiffres occurring at the two places are synonyms, will, I think, be sufficiently evident to any one who will himself examine the following cases. It is the nature of the agreements which proves the thesis, and not the number of cases here cited. The reader will remember that the Copan series comprises Plates I to XXIII, inclusive; the Palenque series, Plate XXIV and higher numbers.

The sign of the group of Mexican gods who relate to hell, i. e., a circle with a central dot, and with four small segments cut out at four equally distant points of its circumference, is found in No. 4291, Plate XXII, and in many of the Palenque plates, as Plate LVI, Nos. 2090, 2073, 2045, 2021, etc. In both places this sign is worn by human figures just below the ear.

The same sign occurs as an important part of No. 4271, Plate XXII, and No. 4118, Plate XIII (Copan), and No. 2064, Plate LVI (Palenque), etc.

No. 7, Plate V^a, and No. 1969, Plate LVI, I regard as absolutely identical. These are both human figures. No. 12, Plate V^a, and No. 637, Plate LIII, are probably the same. These probably represent or relate to the long-nosed divinity, Yacateuctli, the Mexican god of commerce, etc., or rather to his Maya representative.

The sign of Tlaloc, or rather the family of Tlalocs, the gods of rain, floods, and waters, is an eye (or sometimes a mouth), around which there is a double line drawn. I take No. 26, Plate V^a, of the Copan series, and Nos. 154 and 165, Plate XXIV, to be corresponding references to members of this family. No. 4, Plate V^a, and No. 155 also correspond.

No. 4242, Plate XXII, is probably related to No. 53, Plate XXIV and its congeners.

Nos. 14 and 34, Plate V^a, are clearly related to No. 900, Plate LIV, Nos. 127 and 176, Plate XXIV, No. 3010, Plate LVI, and many others.

Plate III^a of Copan is evidently identically the same as the No. 75 of the Palenque Plate No. XXIV.

The right half of No. 27, Plate V^a, is the same as the right half of Nos. 3020, 3040, and many others of Plate LVI.

No. 17, Plate V^a, is related to No. 2051, Plate LVI, and many others like it.

The major part of No. 4105, Plate XIII, is the same as No. 124, Plate XXIV, etc.

It is not necessary to add a greater number of examples here. The card-catalogue which I have mentioned enables me to at once pick out all the cases of which the above are specimens, taken just as they fell under my eye in rapidly turning over the cards. They therefore represent the average agreement, neither more nor less. Taken together they show that the same signs were used at Copan and at Palenque. As the same symbols used at both places occur in like positions in regard to the human face, etc., I conclude that not only were the same signs used at both places, but that these signs had the same meaning; i. e., were truly synonyms. In future I shall regard this as demonstrated.

VIII.
HUITZILOPOCHTLI (MEXICAN GOD OF WAR), TEOYAOMIQUI (MEXICAN GODDESS OF DEATH), MICLANTECUTLI (MEXICAN GOD OF HELL), AND TLALOC (MEXICAN RAIN-GOD), CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO CENTRAL AMERICAN DIVINITIES.

The one of these objects with which we are now concerned is figured in Plate (63) of the work quoted, and is reproduced here as Fig. 52.

Dr. Leemans refers to a similarity between this figure and others in Stephens’ Travels in Central America, but gives no general comparison.

I wish to direct attention to some of the points of this cut. The chiffre or symbol of the principal figure is, perhaps, represented in his belt, and is a St. Andrew’s cross, with a circle at each end of it. Inside the large circle is a smaller one. It may be said, in passing, that the cross probably relates to the air and the circle to the sun.

The main figure has two hands folded against his breast. Two other arms are extended, one in front, the other behind, which carry two birds. Each arm has a bracelet. This second pair of hands is not described by Dr. Leemans. The two birds are exact duplicates, except that the eye of one is shut, of the other open. Just above the bill of each bird is something which might be taken as a second bill (which probably is not, however), and on this and on the back of each bird are five spines or claws. The corresponding claws are curved and shaped alike in the two sets. The birds are fastened to the neck of the person represented by two ornaments, which are alike, and which seem to be the usual hieroglyph of the crotalus jaw. These jaws are placed similarly with respect to each bird. In Kingsborough’s Mexican Antiquities, vol. I, Plate X, we find the parrot as the sign of Tonatihu, the sun, and in Plate XXV with Naolin, the sun. On a level with the nose of the principal figure are two symbols, one in front and one behind, each inclosing a St. Andrew’s cross, and surmounted by what seems to be a flaming fire. It is probably the chiffre of the wind, as the cross is of the rain. Below the rear one of these is a head with protruding tongue (the sign of Quetzalcoatl); below the other a hieroglyph (perhaps a bearded face). Each of these is upborne by a hand. It is to be noticed, also, that these last arms have bracelets different from the pair on the breast.

In passing, it may be noted that the head in rear is under a cross, and has on its cheek the symbol U. These are the symbols of the left-hand figure in the Palenque cross tablet.

The head hanging from the rear of the belt has an open eye (like that of the principal figure), and above it is a crotalus mask, with open eye, and teeth, and forked fangs. The principal figure wears over his head a mask, with open mouth, and with tusks, and above this mask is the eagle’s head. This eagle is a sign of Tlaloc, at least in Yucatan. In Mexico the eagle was part of the insignia of Tetzcatlipoca, “the devil,” who overthrew the good Quetzalcoatl and reintroduced human sacrifice.

The characteristics of the principal figure, 63, are then briefly as follows:

I. His chiffre is an air-cross with the sun-circle.

II. He has four hands.

III. He bears two birds as a symbol.

IV. The claws or spikes on the backs of these are significant.

V. The mask with tusks over the head.

VI. The head worn at the belt.

VII. The captive trodden under foot.

VIII. The chain from the belt attached to a kind of ornament or symbol.

IX. The twisted flames (?) or winds (?) on each side of the figure.

X. His association with Quetzalcoatl or Cuculkan, as shown by the mouth with protruding tongue, and with Tlaloc or Tetzcatlipoca, as shown by the eagle’s head.

We may note here for reference the signification of one of the hieroglyphs in the right-hand half of Fig. 52, i. e., in that half which contains only writing. The topmost chiffre is undoubtedly the name, or part of the name, of the principal figure represented in the other half. It is in pure picture-writing; that is, it expresses the sum of his attributes. It has the crotalus mask, with nose ornament, which he wears over his face; then the cross, with the “five feathers” of Mexico, and the sun symbol. These are in the middle of the chiffre. Below these the oval may be, and probably is, heaven, with the rain descending and producing from the surface of the earth (the long axis of the ellipse), the seed, of which three grains are depicted.

We know by the occurrence of the hieroglyphs on the reverse side of the stone that this is not of Aztec sculpture. These symbols are of the same sort as those at Copan, Palenque, etc., and I shall show later that some of them occur in the Palenque tablets. Hence, we know this engraving to be Yucatec and not Aztec in its origin. If it had been sculptured on one side only, and these hieroglyphs omitted, I am satisfied that the facts which I shall point out in the next paragraphs would have led to the conclusion that this stone was Mexican in its origin. Fortunately the native artist had the time to sculpture the Yucatec hieroglyphs, which are the proof of its true origin. It was not dropped by a traveling Aztec; it was made by a Yucatec.

In passing, it may be said that the upper left-hand, hieroglyph of Plate XIII most probably repeats this name.

I collect from the third volume of Bancroft’s Native Races, chapter viii, such descriptions of Huitzilopochtli as he was represented among the Mexicans as will be of use to us in our comparisons. No display of learning in giving the references to the original works is necessary here, since Mr. Bancroft has placed all these in order and culled them for a use like the present. It will suffice once for all to refer the critical reader to this volume, and to express the highest sense of obligation to Mr. Bancroft’s compilation, which renders a survey of the characteristic features of the American divinities easy.

In Mexico, then, this god had, among other symbols, “five balls of feathers arranged in the form of a cross.” This was in reference to the mysterious conception of his mother through the powers of the air. The upper hieroglyph in Fig. 52, and one of the lower ones, contain this sign: “In his right hand he had an azured staff cutte in fashion of a waving snake.” (See Plate LXI of Stephens.) “Joining to the temple of this idol there was a piece of less work, where there was another idol they called Tlaloc. These two idolls were alwayes together, for that they held them as companions and of equal power.”

To his temple “there were foure gates,” in allusion to the form of the cross. The temple was surrounded by rows of skulls (as at Copan) and the temple itself was upon a high pyramid. Solis says the war god sat “on a throne supported by a blue globe. From this, supposed to represent the heavens, projected four staves with serpents’ heads. (See Plate XXIV, Stephens.) “The image bore on its head a bird of wrought plumes,” “its right hand rested upon a crooked serpent.” “Upon the left arm was a buckler bearing five white plums arranged in form of a cross.” Sahagun describes his device as a dragon’s head, “frightful in the extreme, and casting fire out of his mouth.”

Herrara describes Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca together, and says they were “beset with pieces of gold wrought like birds, beasts, and fishes.” “For collars, they had ten hearts of men,” “and in their necks Death painted.”

No description will give a better idea of the general features of this god than the following cuts from Bancroft’s Native Races, which are copied from Leon y Gama, Las Dos Piedras, etc. Figs. 53 and 54 are the war god himself; Fig. 55 is the back of the former statue on a larger scale; Fig. 56 is the god of hell, and was engraved on the bottom of the block.