At Chichen Itza, the buildings are remarkable [pg 219] for the mass of carved stone work with which they are decorated, outside and inside. Great horrid masks, geometrical patterns, intertwined snakes, occur. At some corners of buildings are curious hook-like projections, which some persons have thought were meant to represent elephant trunks. Mr. Holmes describes carefully carved pillars resting upon gigantic snake-head carvings. One room in the “Temple of the Tigers” has the inside wall composed of blocks of stone, each of which is sculptured. The carvings represent persons richly dressed. When [pg 220] the building was first made, these figures were brightly painted and traces of the colors still remain.
We can tell a good deal about the lives of the builders of these old buildings from a study of the figures and carvings. These show their dress and modes of worship. The ruins themselves show how they built. Figures on tablets at Palenque show that they changed their head forms by bandaging like some tribes of whom we know.
At Lorillard City, ruins explored by Mr. Charnay, are some curious figures. Among them one represents a person kneeling, with his tongue out, and a cord passed through a-hole in it. The old Mayas really used to torture themselves this way to please their gods. They pierced their tongues and passed a rough cord through the hole, and drew it back and forward.
Map Showing Indian Reservations of the United States in 1897. (West)
Map Showing Indian Reservations of the United States in 1897. (East)
No one can read the characters on the tablets of Palenque and the stone figures at Copan. Similar characters occur at other ruins. At Tikal some were cut upon beautiful wooden panels. They were carved on greenstone ornaments, scratched upon shells, and painted upon pottery, There were plenty of books among the Mayas, Some of these still exist, and four have been quite carefully studied. They contain many quaint pictures of priests, gods, worshipers, etc. They also contain many numbers and day names. There are also in them many of the same strange hieroglyphs, already mentioned. These are called [pg 221] “calculiform” or “pebble-shaped” characters, because they present a generally roundish outline, as of a pebble cut through. It is plain that they were at first simply pictures. Some of them, no doubt, are still simple pictures of ideas; others convey ideas different from those at first pictured; many can no longer be seen to be pictures at all; some, perhaps, represent sounds, and are not now pictures for ideas. It is possible, in a general way, to make out something of the sense of parts of Mayan books and inscriptions, but it is quite likely that they will never be exactly read as we read our own written books.