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?

One of the first questions to be settled is whether the same system of writing was employed at Palenque and at Copan. Before any study of the meanings of the separate chiffres can be made, we must have our material properly assorted, and must not include in the figures we are examining for the detection of a clue, any which may belong to a system possibly very different.

The opinion of Stephens and of later writers is confirmed by my comparison of the Palenque and the Copan series; that is, it becomes evident that the latter series is far the older.

In Nicaragua and Copan the statues of gods were placed at the foot of the pyramid; farther north, as at Palenque, they were placed in temples at the summit. Such differences show a marked change in customs, and must have required much time for their accomplishment. In this time did the picture-writing change, or, indeed, was it ever identical?

To settle the question whether they were written on the same system, I give here the results of a rapid survey of the card-catalogue of hieroglyphs. A more minute examination is not necessary, as the present one is quite sufficient to show that the system employed at the two places was the same in its general character and almost identical even in details. The practical result of this conclusion is that similar characters of the Copan and Palenque series may be used interchangeably.

A detailed study of the undoubted synonyms of the two places will afford much light on the manner in which these characters were gradually evolved. This is not the place for such a study, but it is interesting to remark how, even in unmistakable synonyms, the Palenque character is always the most conventional, the least pictorial; that is, the latest. Examples of this are No. 7, Plate Va, and No. 1969, Plate LVI. The mask in profile which forms the left-hand edge of No. 7 seems to have been conventionalized into the two hooks and the ball, which have the same place in No. 1969.