The chief character of the hieroglyphic, 15 R. (Rau’s scheme), of the Palenque Tablet is a serpent’s head (shown correctly only on the stone in the Smithsonian Museum and in Dr. Rau’s photograph), and nearly the same as the symbol for the same Mexican day. The method of representing a house in the Maya manuscripts is substantially the same as the Mexican symbol for Calli (House). The cross on the Palenque Tablet has so many features in common with those in the blue and red loops of the Fejervary Codex as to induce the belief that they were derived from the same type. We see in that of the Tablet the reptile head as at the base of the cross in the blue loop, the nodes, and probably the bird of that in the red loop, and the two human figures.
What is perhaps still more significant, is the fact that in this plate of the Fejervery Codex, and elsewhere in the same Codex, we see evidences of a transition from pictorial symbols to conventional characters; for example, the yellow heart-shaped symbol in the lower left-hand corner of the Fejervary plate which is there used to denote the day Ocelotl (Tiger). On the other hand we find in the manuscript Troano for example, on plate III, one of the symbols used in the Tonalamatl of the Vatican Codex B and in other Mexican codices to signify water. On Plate XXV* of the same manuscript, under the four symbols of the cardinal points, we see four figures, one a sitting figure similar to the middle one with black head, on the left side of the Cortesian plate; one a spotted dog sitting on what is apparently part of the carapace of a tortoise; one a monkey, and the other a bird with a hooked bill. Is it not possible that we have here an indication of the four days—Dragon, Death, Monkey, Vulture, with which the Mexican years began?
In all the Maya manuscripts we find the custom of using heads as symbols, almost, if not quite, as often as in the Mexican codices. Not only so, but in the former, even in the purely conventional characters, we see evidences of a desire to turn every one possible into the figure of a head, a fact still more apparent in the monumental inscriptions.
Turning to the ruins of Copan as represented by Stephens and others, we find on the altars and elsewhere the same death’s-head with huge incisors so common in Mexico, and on the statues the snake-skin so often repeated on those of Mexico. Here we find the Cipactli as a huge crocodile head,[52] also the monkey’s head used as a hieroglyphic.[53]
The pendant lip or lolling tongue, which ever it be, of the central figure of the Mexican calendar stone is found also in the central figure of the sun tablet of Palenque[54] and a dozen times over in the inscriptions.
The long, elephantine, Tlaloc nose, so often repeated in the Mexican codices, is even more common and more elaborate in the Maya manuscripts and sculptures, and, as we learn from a MS. paper by Mr. Gustav Eisen, lately received by the Smithsonian Institution, has also been found at Copan.
Many more points or items of agreement might be pointed out, but these will suffice to show that one must have borrowed from the other, for it is impossible that isolated civilizations should have produced such identical results in details even down to conventional figures. Again we ask the question, Which was the borrower? We hesitate to accept what seems to be the legitimate conclusion to be drawn from these facts, as it compels us to take issue with the view almost universally held. One thing is apparent, viz, that the Mexican symbols could never have grown out of the Maya hieroglyphics. That the latter might have grown out of the former is not impossible.
If we accept the theory that there was a Toltec nation preceding the advent of the Aztec, which, when broken up and driven out of Mexico, proceeded southward, where probably colonies from the main stock had already been planted, we may be able to solve the enigma.
If this people were, as is generally supposed, the leaders in Mexican and Central American civilization, it is possible that the Aztecs, a more savage and barbarous people, borrowed their civilization from the former, and, having less tendency toward development, retained the original symbols and figures of the former, adding only ornamentation and details, but not advancing to any great extent toward a written language.
Some such supposition as this, I believe, is absolutely necessary to explain the facts mentioned. But even this will compel us to admit that the monuments of Yucatan and Copan are of much more recent date than has generally been supposed, and such I am inclined to believe is the fact. At any rate, I think I may fairly claim, without rendering myself chargeable with egotism, that my discovery in regard to the two plates so frequently mentioned will throw some additional light on this vexed question.