[876] Analysis of the Pictorial Text inscribed on two Palenque Tablets, N. York, 1896.
[877] H. Beuchat however considers that "the Toltec question remains insoluble"; though the hypothesis that the Toltecs formed part of the north to south movement is attractive, it is not yet proved, Manuel d'Archéologie américaine, Paris, 1912, pp. 258-61.
[878] Quetzalcoatl, the "Bright-feathered Snake," was one of the three chief gods of the Nahuan pantheon. He was the god of wind and inventor of all the arts, round whom clusters much of the mythology, and of the pictorial and plastic art of the Mexicans.
[879] Globus, LXVI. pp. 95-6.
[880] Herbert J. Spinden, "A Study of Maya Art," Mem. Peabody Mus. VI., Cambridge, Mass. 1913, p. 3 ff., and Proc. Nineteenth Internat. Congress Americanists, 1917, p. 165.
[881] J. W. Powell, 16th Ann. Rep. Bur. Am. Eth. 1894, p. xcv.
[882] Sylvanus Griswold Morley ("An Introduction to the Study of the Maya hieroglyphs," Bur. Am. Eth. Bull. 57, 1915), briefly summarises the theories advanced for the interpretation of Maya writing (pp. 26-30). "The theory now most generally accepted is, that while chiefly ideographic, the glyphs are sometimes phonetic." This author is of opinion "that as the decipherment of Maya writing progresses, more and more phonetic elements will be identified, though the idea conveyed by a glyph will always be found to overshadow its phonetic value" (p. 30).
[883] "Day Symbols of the Maya Year," 16th Ann. Rep. Bur. Am. Eth. 1894, p. 205.
[884] p. 32 ff.
[885] Manuel d'Archéologie américaine, p. 506.