A third form of hieroglyphic was by devising some conventional mark or symbol to suggest the initial sound of the name to be recorded. Such a mark or character would be a "letter," in fact; and thus the prehistoric alphabets were arrived at, not only among the early Mayans of Yucatan, etc., but among the prehistoric peoples of Asia, as the Chinese, the Hittites, etc., as well as the primeval Egyptians. Many of the sculptures in Copan and Palenque to which we have referred contain pictographs and hieroglyphs. A Spanish Bishop of Yucatan drew up a Mayan alphabet in order to express the hieroglyphs on monuments and manuscripts in Roman letters; but much more data are needed before scholars will read the ancient Mayan-Aztec tongues as they have been enabled to understand the Egyptian inscriptions or the cuneiform records of Babylonia. For the American hieroglyphs we still lack a second Young or Champollion.
There are three famous manuscripts in the Mayan character:
1. The Dresden Codex, preserved in the Royal Library of that city. It is called a "religious and astrological ritual" by Abbé Brasseur.
2. Codex Troano, in Madrid, described in two folios by Abbé Brasseur.
3. Codex Peresianus, named from the wrapper in which it was found, 1859, which had the name "Perez." It is also known as Codex Mexicanus.
In Lord Kingsborough's great work on Mexican Antiquities there are several of the Mayan manuscripts printed in facsimile, and others in a book by M. Aubin, of Paris.
Each group of letters in a Mayan inscription is enclosed in an irregular oval, supposed to resemble the cross-section of a pebble; hence the term calculiform (i. e., "pebble-shaped") is applied to their hieroglyphs, as cuneiform (i. e., "wedge-shaped") is applied to the Babylonian and Assyrian letters.
The paper which the prehistoric Mexicans (Mayas, Aztecs, or Tescucans, etc.) used for writing and drawing upon was of vegetable origin, like the Egyptian papyrus. It was made by macerating the leaves of the maguey, a plant of the greatest importance (v. p. 94). When the surface of the paper was glazed, the letters were painted on in brilliant colors, proceeding from left to right, as we do. Each book was a strip of paper, several yards long and about ten inches wide, not rolled round a stick, as the volumes of ancient Rome were, but folded zigzag, like a screen. The protecting boards which held the book were often artistically carved and painted.
The topics of the ordinary books, so far as we yet know, were religious ritual, dreams, and prophecies, the calendar, chronological notes, medical superstitions, portents of marriage and birth. The written language was in common and extensive use for the legal conveyance and sale of property.
One of the most remarkable facts connected with this extinct civilization was the accuracy of their calendar and chronological system. Their calendar was actually superior to that then existing in Europe. They had two years: one for civil purposes, of three hundred and sixty-five days, divided into eighteen months of twenty days, besides five supplementary days; the other, a ritual or ecclesiastical year, to regulate the public festivals. The civil year required thirteen days to be added at the end of every fifty-two years, so as to harmonize with the ritual year. Each month contained four weeks of five days, but as each of the twenty days (forming a month) had a distinct name, Humboldt concluded that the names were borrowed from a prehistoric calendar, used in India and Tartary.
Wilson (Prehistoric Man, i, 133) remarks:
By the unaided results of native science the dwellers on the Mexican plateau had effected an adjustment of civil to solar time so nearly correct that when the Spaniards landed on their coast, their own reckoning according to the unreformed Julian calendar, was really eleven days in error, compared with that of the barbarian nation whose civilization they so speedily effaced.