It has been argued that the Egyptian and Palenque sculpture resemble each other in that both are generally in profile; but the trivialness of the reasoning will be at once apparent. On the contrary, Mr. Bancroft remarks, “Sculpture in Egypt is for the most part in intaglio, in America it is usually in relief.” Notwithstanding the oft-repeated assertion that a resemblance between Egyptian and Maya hieroglyphics exist, no one of the Egyptologists so successful in their chosen field have been able to decipher the Maya writing. It is not improbable that the Palenque and Copan civilization received its first impulse from some of the peoples of the southern or eastern shores of the Mediterranean, but from which it would be impossible to say even if we were certain that such was the case. Whatever of a foreign character it may have had at first has been mostly lost in the independent development of new and original characteristics, the natural outgrowth of new wants and new conditions, arising through the lapse of many centuries. The latter remark we think may be applied with even more certainty to the Nahua civilization as displayed in its sculpture. All through Mexico the favorite subject for the Toltec or Aztec sculptor was the serpent, generally the rattlesnake. Mr. Bancroft in his fourth volume has given numerous examples of this fact. Serpent sculpture was also common among the Mayas, but to a less extent, and it is not improbable that the symbol entered into their art through the Quichés—a mixed people composed of Mayas and Nahuas. We have already observed the same disposition to sculpture the rattlesnake among the Mound-builders. In the great serpent upwards of a thousand feet in length on Brush Creek, Adams County, Ohio, we find a striking analogy to the tendency of Mexican art. Furthermore, the great serpent grasps in its jaws (if they may be so called) an immense oval figure of precisely the shape of an egg, and “the combined figure is regarded as a symbolical illustration of the Oriental cosmological idea of the serpent and the egg.” We have seen in the remarks of Señor Melgar that two examples of the egg possessing precisely the same significance which is attached to it in Eastern Asia were found near the City of Mexico. The part which the serpent symbol plays in the south and east Asiatic sculpture and mythology is probably well known to the reader; and if not, a perusal of Maurace’s Indian Antiquities or Moor’s Hindu Pantheon will satisfy him that it occupied a place equally important among Nahuas and Hindoos. The great serpent in Ohio may be a connecting link between the art of both Mexicans and Asiatics. In the course of independent development which the Nahuas underwent during thousands of years, the cosmological symbol of the egg may have been lost and supplanted by that of the serpent alone, the emblem of the life principle in both America and Asia. However, we may safely close these speculations with the conclusion that though the Mayas and Nahuas were probably descendants of foreign stock, their civilization, so far as we are able to judge from their arts, was indigenous—developed upon our soil, and offering but few analogies to any other.

Hieroglyphics.—No well authenticated Mound-builder hieroglyphics have as yet come to light. The Grave Creek Mound tablet we believe is now shown unquestionably to be an archæological fraud. The Cincinnati tablet figured in our first chapter seems to bear some symbolic signs upon its face, but no resemblance can be traced between them and any other known hieroglyphic signs. The Davenport tablet if genuine is of great interest in that it abounds in hieroglyphics, some of which are not unlike some of the signs employed by the Aztecs; besides, the element of picture-writing so common to that people plays a prominent part on both sides of that mysterious stone. Col. Charles Whittlesey, in the second chapter of his Report to the Centennial Commission of Ohio (already cited), has figured and described rock sculpture near Barnesville, Newark, Independence, Amherst and Wellsville, most of which are of the lowest grade of savage art, and we think can only be attributed to the red Indian.

Mr. W. H. Holmes has furnished specimens of picture-writing of a rude character found engraven in the rocks of the cañon of the Rio Mancos and San Juan, but there is no evidence that they are or are not the work of the Cliff-dwellers whose works abound upon neighboring rocks.[598] We have already called attention to the tablets of hieroglyphics at Palenque, Copan and in Yucatan, a specimen of which is shown in a cut on page 390. The accompanying cut, employed by Stevens, Baldwin and Bancroft, show the thirty-six squares of hieroglyphics engraven upon the top of a Copan altar.

In addition to these stone and stucco records, the Mayas had books, which Bishop Landa describes as written on a large leaf doubled in folds and enclosed between two boards which they ornamented; they wrote on both sides of the paper, in columns accommodated to the folds; the paper they made from the roots of trees, and coated it with a white varnish on which one could write well. These books were called Analtees, a word which, according to Villagutierre, signifies the same as history.[599] Bishop Landa confesses to having burned a great number of the Maya books because they contained nothing in which were not superstitions and falsities of the devil.[600] Bancroft has quoted from Peter Martyr a description of these books, which conveys the additional information that they were written on many leaves joined together but folded so that when opened two pages are presented to view.[601] Three of the Maya manuscripts are known to have escaped the vandalism of the early Fathers. These are, first, the Mexican MS. No. 2 of the Imperial Library at Paris, called by Rosny the Codex Peresianus, which has been photographed by order of the French government, but we believe is still unedited. The second, the Dresden Codex, in the Royal Library at Dresden, a complete copy of which was published by Lord Kingsborough. It is a Maya, and not an Aztec MS., as is proven by its marked resemblance to the tablets of Palenque and Copan, a fact pointed out by Mr. Stephens, though at the date of his exploration everything was pronounced Aztec.[602] The third, the Manuscript Troano, found by Brasseur de Bourbourg at Madrid in 1865 in the possession of Señor Tro y Ortolano, from whom it derives its name, is a Maya MS. of unknown origin and history. The French government and the Commission Scientifique du Mexique reproduced it in fac-simile by means of chromo-lithography, and Brasseur, with the expenditure of great labor, attempted to translate part of it, which he has published; but in a subsequent work he confesses that he began his reading at the wrong end of the manuscript, which, as Mr. Bancroft humorously remarks, was a “trifling error perhaps in the opinion of the enthusiastic Abbé, but a somewhat serious one as it appears to scientific men.”[603] Mr. Bancroft has reproduced a page of the MS. Troano in his work, and accompanied it with a condensed account from the Abbé’s description as follows: “The original is written on a strip of maguey paper about fourteen feet long and nine inches wide, the surface of which is covered with a whitish varnish, on which the figures are painted in black, red, blue and brown. It is folded fan-like in thirty-five folds, presenting when shut much the appearance of a modern large octavo volume. The hieroglyphics cover both sides of the paper, and the writing is consequently divided into seventy pages, each about five by nine inches, having been apparently executed after the paper was folded, so that the folding does not interfere with the written matter. * * * The regular lines of written characters are uniformly in black, while the pictorial portions, of what may perhaps be considered representative signs, are in red and brown, chiefly the former, and the blue appears for the most part as a background in some of the pages.”[604] Notwithstanding the bigoted spirit exhibited by Bishop Landa in his destruction of the native Maya books in the presence of their sorrowful and helpless owners, he did one act of service for the antiquarian, which will ever entitle him to the gratitude of every student of ancient American civilization. That act was the record which he made of the Maya hieroglyphic alphabet. The Bishop has left us scarcely two and a half octavo pages (of his work as edited by Brasseur de Bourbourg) upon this important subject, yet it is the only known key to the mysteries of Palenque, Copan and the numerous inscriptions found in Yucatan. His explanation of the manner in which letters are combined into words is not clear, and though Mr. Bancroft has translated it literally and introduced parenthetic explanations, still the sense is not very apparent. Brasseur de Bourbourg in his French translation has not succeeded much better, and complains of Landa’s style as being untranslatable. One important fact, however, is deducible from the Bishop’s remarks and example, namely, that the Maya letters were formed into words in much the same order as in the English and other languages which read from the left to the right.[605] Landa’s alphabet is given in the accompanying cut which is an exact photographic reproduction of the original.

Landa adds nothing after this table except the remark: “Of the letters which here fail, this language is wanting and has others added of ours, for other things of which they have need, and already they do not use these characters of theirs, especially the young people who have learned ours.”[606] Landa has left us other hieroglyphic signs, relating to the Maya months and days, which will be given in the next chapter. Many of the hieroglyphics in his alphabet are plainly recognizable in the three Maya MSS. which we have named, though it is quite certain that other signs, which are wanting in his list, are found not only in the MSS. but also among the inscriptions of the several localities we have already described. Besides the attempts made by Brasseur de Bourbourg to decipher the Maya writing, three Américanistes in particular have bestowed labor upon the subject. These are Mr. Wm. Bollaert,[607] M. Hyacinthe de Charencey,[608] and M. Leon de Rosny,[609] the latter of whom is the honorable president of the Société Américaine de France.

By means of Landa’s key, Mr. Bollaert obtained encouraging results from hieroglyphics figured in Stephens’ works. In that author’s Yucatan, vol. ii, page 292, is seen a sculptured figure with hieroglyphics represented on the upper part of the door called Akatzeeb at Chichen-Itza. This tablet is examined by Mr. Bollaert with the following result: “The figure (male) is nude; the cap is like those on the figures at Kabab, and has an ornament round the neck; the large crucible-form before him contains fire, in which some small animal is being burnt or sacrificed. Comparing the hieroglyphs on either side of the figure with the Maya key, I get the following words: Ahau, ‘king’; oc, ‘leg’; Muluc, ‘to unite’; ik, ‘courage’; cib, ‘copal’; eznab, ‘magician’; no, ‘frog’; which may mean that the magician has in the crucible a frog to be sacrificed, in which copal as incense is used. The two lines of hieroglyphs give something like the following: Kings must die—they have courage, and after death are united to those who went before them. The king is with his fathers; the chief and his family burn copal and mourn for his death.”[610] On the tablet of the cross at Palenque, Mr. Bollaert found in squares eznab, “magician”; dz, “a hand”; the “aspiration sign” ⋃; and a part of zip, “tree.” Among the hieroglyphs he traced ahau, “king”; zip, “tree”; akbal, “a plant”; pax, “a musical instrument.” Mr. Bollaert has attempted to read several other inscriptions with no more satisfactory results.[611] One or two of the same scholar’s attempts with the Dresden Codex yield the following: We come to thy presence to implore. The young female implores before the deity, she weeps but has courage. In a group representing a king and a young female, he reads: She has made a vow about the king to the magician, the king is happy. Again: The sacred bird chel is sacrificed, there is weeping; the bride weeps for the bird, she makes a vow or prays for the king, she offers a tortoise, a great feast is given.[612] M. de Charencey translates the hieroglyph found just above the child which is being offered to the bird on the tablet of the cross at Palenque, by the word Hunabku, “the only holy one.” He also finds the name of Kukulcan and eznab, “magician,” the name of a month.[613] M. de Rosny in his able essay on the decipherment of the hieratic writings of Central America has undertaken the solution of this interesting and perplexing problem in a scientific manner, and we have the fullest confidence that his system constructed on Landa’s key will open to us the books and inscriptions of the Mayas. But two of the four parts which constitute the work have been published, still we think sufficient data has been placed at the hands of scholars by M. de Rosny to justify the opinion that if the remainder of his essay should never appear, the work of interpreting some of the Maya writings might be carried on with reasonable certainty. Landa’s key contains seventy-one signs (twenty for the days, eighteen for the months, and thirty-three in the alphabet.) M. de Rosny, by a careful examination of all the hieratic texts of the Mayas which are known, has discovered more than seven hundred different signs. Of this number he has deciphered and classified four hundred and thirty-nine as follows: Alphabetic signs, including Landa’s (of which all the others are but varieties), two hundred and sixty-two; signs of the days, one hundred and fifty-nine; and the eighteen signs of the months given by Landa. All these signs are classified in a double folio plate (Pl. XIII) which we believe deserves to be regarded as the larger portion of the much-sought-for Maya Rosetta stone. Considerable difference of opinion has existed as to the direction in which the hieroglyphics should be read. Brasseur held the view that the proper order was from right to left, and that the beginning of a book was where our books end. This mistake brought down the ridicule of scholars upon the Abbé’s head, when it was discovered that he had begun at the wrong end to translate the Troano MS. Mr. Bollaert says, “I have read from the bottom upwards and from right to left.”[614] Dr. Brinton[615] has suggested some such order as the following arrangement of the word marvellous:

M. de Rosny has shown that the statement of Landa and the fact that the human faces shown in the hieroglyphs look toward the left, indicate that the signs should be read from left to right.[616] In rare cases this order is reversed, as is seen on a couple of leaves of the Codex Peresianus. There are, no doubt, numerous instances in which the signs are arranged in perpendicular columns, and the order in which such columns are to be read is not the same in all manuscripts. In the Maya inscriptions and manuscripts, the “illustrations” or pictorial figures are interwoven with the alphabetic signs forming an important part of the writing. In many cases a page of MS. (as shown in Rosny’s plates) is divided into sections or squares, in which the hieroglyphics are inseparably connected with grotesque figures which accompany them and form a part of the writing. M. de Rosny has undertaken the classification and interpretation of all these figures which are found in the existing Maya MSS. This doubtless will prove an important auxiliary to the table of signs already alluded to. We may reasonably expect that since M. de Rosny has shown the extensive character of the Maya phonetic and symbolic alphabet, he will furnish us examples of its application in the practical interpretation of the hieroglyphics, in the latter part of his work. Recently Dr. Ph. Valentini has pronounced the Landa alphabet a Spanish fabrication, of later date than the conquest. See Proceedings of Amer. Antiquarian Soc. for April, 1880.

We do not deem it necessary to assure the reader that while the Aztec picture-writing was not as far advanced in the scale of graphic development as the system employed by the Mayas, still it was an accurate means of communication and of recording events. The “scribes” of the Mexicans were an educated class of men, who with strictest accuracy painted in hieroglyphic symbols the record of national, historic and traditional affairs, as well as the tribute rolls, the calendar with its feast days, the stated services of the gods, the genealogical tables of noble and royal personages, and even the customs of the humble classes. No doubt many educated persons who did not belong to the priestly and lettered class, were acquainted with the system employed, and many others understood it sufficiently to recognize calendar and feast signs. The Aztec books were painted mostly on cotton cloth, prepared skins and maguey paper, and when not rolled were folded fan-like and bound with thin wooden covers, like the Maya books. The priests who accompanied the conquerors and immediately followed them, mistook the pictured figures painted in these books to be representations of heathen deities, and consequently inaugurated a system of wholesale destruction of all the picture-writing. Las Casas informs us that they were actuated by the fear that in matters of religion the existence of these books would be injurious. The infamous crime committed against the cause of knowledge and the irreparable injury done to the natives, their successors, and to students of history for all time, by the destruction of those valuable MSS., must ever remain an unerasable blot upon the name of the early church in Mexico, and must be ranked with the worst deeds of Goths and Vandals. Juan de Zumárraga, the chief of these sacrilegious destroyers who committed the annals of the Mexican States publicly to the flames in his tour of the principal cities of the country, will ever be remembered with proper contempt. Fortunately, many of the MSS. were hidden by their owners and have since come to light; the greater number of these, however, were tribute rolls, which, down to the last century, played an important part in the Mexican courts of justice. Prescott informs us that “until late in the last century, there was a professor in the University of Mexico especially devoted to the study of the national picture-writing. But as this was with a view to legal proceedings, his information probably was limited to deciphering titles.” In the course of time the priests became acquainted with the harmless nature of the hieroglyphics, through their use by the natives in their making confessions and in recording the Lord’s prayer. Many documents written since the conquest were provided by their authors with a Spanish translation or with an explanation in Aztec written with Spanish letters. Many of these are in existence, and with a few authentic documents, written previous to the conquest, are preserved in public and private libraries of Europe and this country, the finest collection of which is that of the National Museum of the University of Mexico. The reader is no doubt already familiar with the splendid fac-similes of several Mexican MSS. published in Lord Kingsborough’s work. Mr. Bancroft has concisely narrated the events and vicissitudes which have attended the transmission of some of these documents through the hands of successive owners to their present depositories.[617] Several writers on hieroglyphic systems, and the above author among them, have classified the progressive steps of picture-writing into representative, symbolic, and phonetic. Of these, the first is by far the simplest, and has invariably preceded the others in the development of the graphic art. It was natural for the savage to represent an object by a picture, in which that object was surrounded with certain conditions; at first the entire object was pictured, but subsequently only a portion of the object, as in the case of a bird, the head or foot or wing in the more advanced stages of art, would be substituted for the object itself. In symbolic picture-writing, we find an attempt at representing abstract ideas and actions. Some quality or attribute of a person is portrayed by means of the representative process, by symbols which would naturally seem to suggest the distinguishing characteristic of the person or occasion. A certain Aztec festival might be symbolized by the conventional calendar sign, an altar, a flint knife held by a human hand, and a smoking human heart. Phonetic picture-writing is, of course, dependent upon the sounds of the language for which it is designed. Its province is to represent those sounds by pictures of objects in whose names the sounds occur. Words, syllables and elementary sounds which are represented by alphabets, are thus gradually evolved in the progression which follows. Mr. Bancroft, by a most ingenious example, has illustrated this principle as applied to our own language. “According to this system,” he says, “the hand pointing up signifies successively the word ‘hand,’ the syllable ‘hand’ in handsome, the sound ‘ha’ in happy, the aspiration ‘h’ in head, and finally, by simplifying its form or writing it rapidly, the hand pointing up becomes hand outline and then the ‘h’ of the alphabet.”[618] The Aztecs never reached the last stage of phonetic development, namely, the alphabet. They, however, employed the system in the syllabic formation of words to a very considerable extent. The priests soon found the natives applying their art of writing to the record of the standard expressions employed in teaching the new faith. Amen was expressed by the sign of water, atl associated with a maguey plant, metl which united gave the word atl-metl, or after the ever present Aztec termination tl is stricken off, we have a-me, an approximation to our word Amen. Mr. Bancroft gives also the following example of the manner in which the name Teocaltitlan was expressed by this syllabic-phonetic writing: “It is written in one of the manuscripts of the Boturini collection by a pictured pair of lips, tentli, for the syllable te; footsteps, symbolic of a road, otli for o; a house, calli for cal; and teeth, tlantli for tlanti, being a common connective syllable.” We think the reader will find a clearer illustration in the word Chapultepec, which literally means “hill of the grasshopper.” By reference to the Aztec migration map which has been published by several authors[619] (the most correct copy accessible to the general reader is that by Bancroft).[620] A hill surmounted by a grasshopper will be observed among the figures. The same representation in different form will be seen in Boturini’s picture-map of the migration. Chapultepec is well known as the royal hill, a short distance west of the city of Mexico, celebrated as the country residence of Montezuma. Numerous similar examples might be selected from the migration maps of this combination of the three methods employed. Proper names were always expressed in a similar manner. An example of the representative and symbolic stages of the picture-writing of the Aztecs has been given by Mr. Bancroft from the Codex Mendoza in Kingsborough.[621] We here reproduce the plate used in the Native Races. It describes four steps or periods in the education of children; each period is supposed to refer to a particular year. In the upper left-hand group we see a father (fig. 3) punishing his son by holding him over the fumes of burning chile (fig. 5); in the right-hand group the mother threatens her daughter with similar punishment. In the second group (figs. 12–13), a father punishes his son by exposing him bound hand and foot on the damp ground. A bad boy twelve years of age, according to Aztec custom was always punished in this way, and his punishment lasted during an entire day. A disobedient girl of the same age was obliged to rise in the night and sweep the whole house, as is shown in the right-hand group, or, as no tear is seen in her eye, she may be learning. At the age of eight years children were only shown the instrument of punishment; at ten they were pricked with maguey thorns, or if still unruly, were whipped. The above groups show the methods employed during the eleventh and twelfth years, after which age a child was supposed to be pretty well disciplined. In the third group a father directs his boys (fig. 21) how to transport wood, both upon the back and in the canoe, while the mother teaches the daughter (fig. 23) to make tortillas and use the mealing stone and other utensils (figs. 25, 26, 28); the tortillas are also represented (fig. 27). In the fourth group the son learns the use of the fish-net and the daughter that of the loom. The allowance of tortillas apportioned to the children at the ages represented are shown in figs. 2, 8, 11, 16, 20, 24, 30 and 34. The remaining figures are not representative, but symbolic. The small circles (figs. 1, 10, 19, 29) are numerals indicating that the child was successively eleven, twelve, thirteen and fourteen years of age. A circle or dot was always used for a unit. The comma-like figure issuing from the mouth of the parent is the symbol of speech. The tears in the children’s eyes need no explanation. The singular figure (17) above the girl in the second group is said to be symbolical of night, and to indicate that the sweeping was required in the night.

For most interesting specimens of Aztec picture-writing as well as their supposed explanation, we refer the reader to the Gemelli Carreri and Boturini Migration maps in the Atlas of Garcia y Cubas, or in the second volume of Mr. Bancroft’s work, which are the only places where they are to be found correctly reproduced. Mr. Delafield sought to find an analogy between the Aztec and Egyptian hieroglyphic systems on no other ground than that both were representative, symbolic and phonetic, a most wonderful discovery indeed.[622] Notwithstanding this fact, and many similar efforts, no marked analogy between the Aztec picture-writing and the hieroglyphic systems of any other peoples has yet been pointed out.[623]

Map of Yucatan.—We have found it impossible in this chapter to convey any adequate idea of the number and extent of the ruins scattered over Central America and Mexico. Only by reference to an accurately prepared map, having distinctness and detail, can a proper understanding of this interesting field be reached. Maps of Northern and Central Mexico alone, meeting the requirements, have for some time been accessible, but a reliable map of Yucatan and of neighboring States has long been a desideratum. This great want has recently been supplied by the publication in New York of a rare specimen of cartography, bearing the title, Mapa de la Peninsula de Yucatan, compilado por Joaquin Hübbe y Andres Azuar Perez y revisado y aumentado con datos importantes por C. Hermann Berendt, 1878—size, 28 × 36 inches. Stephens, in his work on Yucatan, indicated the sites of many remains discovered by him; but Señor Perez has for the first time brought before us a view of the whole field, including Yucatan and Campeachy, together with the greater part of Tabasco and Belize, and portions of Guatemala and Chiapas, showing, by means of appropriate symbols, the great number of known ruins. The map has met with merited approval from the American Antiquarian Society, and has been reproduced in Dr. A. Petermann’s Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes Geographische Anstalt, Gotha, Band 25, No. VI, 1879.