It has been argued that the Egyptian and Palenque sculpture resemble each other in that both are generally in profile; but the trivialness of the reasoning will be at once apparent. On the contrary, Mr. Bancroft remarks, “Sculpture in Egypt is for the most part in intaglio, in America it is usually in relief.” Notwithstanding the oft-repeated assertion that a resemblance between Egyptian and Maya hieroglyphics exist, no one of the Egyptologists so successful in their chosen field have been able to decipher the Maya writing. It is not improbable that the Palenque and Copan civilization received its first impulse from some of the peoples of the southern or eastern shores of the Mediterranean, but from which it would be impossible to say even if we were certain that such was the case. Whatever of a foreign character it may have had at first has been mostly lost in the independent development of new and original characteristics, the natural outgrowth of new wants and new conditions, arising through the lapse of many centuries. The latter remark we think may be applied with even more certainty to the Nahua civilization as displayed in its sculpture. All through Mexico the favorite subject for the Toltec or Aztec sculptor was the serpent, generally the rattlesnake. Mr. Bancroft in his fourth volume has given numerous examples of this fact. Serpent sculpture was also common among the Mayas, but to a less extent, and it is not improbable that the symbol entered into their art through the Quichés—a mixed people composed of Mayas and Nahuas. We have already observed the same disposition to sculpture the rattlesnake among the Mound-builders. In the great serpent upwards of a thousand feet in length on Brush Creek, Adams County, Ohio, we find a striking analogy to the tendency of Mexican art. Furthermore, the great serpent grasps in its jaws (if they may be so called) an immense oval figure of precisely the shape of an egg, and “the combined figure is regarded as a symbolical illustration of the Oriental cosmological idea of the serpent and the egg.” We have seen in the remarks of Señor Melgar that two examples of the egg possessing precisely the same significance which is attached to it in Eastern Asia were found near the City of Mexico. The part which the serpent symbol plays in the south and east Asiatic sculpture and mythology is probably well known to the reader; and if not, a perusal of Maurace’s Indian Antiquities or Moor’s Hindu Pantheon will satisfy him that it occupied a place equally important among Nahuas and Hindoos. The great serpent in Ohio may be a connecting link between the art of both Mexicans and Asiatics. In the course of independent development which the Nahuas underwent during thousands of years, the cosmological symbol of the egg may have been lost and supplanted by that of the serpent alone, the emblem of the life principle in both America and Asia. However, we may safely close these speculations with the conclusion that though the Mayas and Nahuas were probably descendants of foreign stock, their civilization, so far as we are able to judge from their arts, was indigenous—developed upon our soil, and offering but few analogies to any other.
Hieroglyphics.—No well authenticated Mound-builder hieroglyphics have as yet come to light. The Grave Creek Mound tablet we believe is now shown unquestionably to be an archæological fraud. The Cincinnati tablet figured in our first chapter seems to bear some symbolic signs upon its face, but no resemblance can be traced between them and any other known hieroglyphic signs. The Davenport tablet if genuine is of great interest in that it abounds in hieroglyphics, some of which are not unlike some of the signs employed by the Aztecs; besides, the element of picture-writing so common to that people plays a prominent part on both sides of that mysterious stone. Col. Charles Whittlesey, in the second chapter of his Report to the Centennial Commission of Ohio (already cited), has figured and described rock sculpture near Barnesville, Newark, Independence, Amherst and Wellsville, most of which are of the lowest grade of savage art, and we think can only be attributed to the red Indian.
Mr. W. H. Holmes has furnished specimens of picture-writing of a rude character found engraven in the rocks of the cañon of the Rio Mancos and San Juan, but there is no evidence that they are or are not the work of the Cliff-dwellers whose works abound upon neighboring rocks.[598] We have already called attention to the tablets of hieroglyphics at Palenque, Copan and in Yucatan, a specimen of which is shown in a cut on [page 390]. The accompanying cut, employed by Stevens, Baldwin and Bancroft, show the thirty-six squares of hieroglyphics engraven upon the top of a Copan altar.
In addition to these stone and stucco records, the Mayas had books, which Bishop Landa describes as written on a large leaf doubled in folds and enclosed between two boards which they ornamented; they wrote on both sides of the paper, in columns accommodated to the folds; the paper they made from the roots of trees, and coated it with a white varnish on which one could write well. These books were called Analtees, a word which, according to Villagutierre, signifies the same as history.[599] Bishop Landa confesses to having burned a great number of the Maya books because they contained nothing in which were not superstitions and falsities of the devil.[600] Bancroft has quoted from Peter Martyr a description of these books, which conveys the additional information that they were written on many leaves joined together but folded so that when opened two pages are presented to view.[601] Three of the Maya manuscripts are known to have escaped the vandalism of the early Fathers. These are, first, the Mexican MS. No. 2 of the Imperial Library at Paris, called by Rosny the Codex Peresianus, which has been photographed by order of the French government, but we believe is still unedited. The second, the Dresden Codex, in the Royal Library at Dresden, a complete copy of which was published by Lord Kingsborough. It is a Maya, and not an Aztec MS., as is proven by its marked resemblance to the tablets of Palenque and Copan, a fact pointed out by Mr. Stephens, though at the date of his exploration everything was pronounced Aztec.[602] The third, the Manuscript Troano, found by Brasseur de Bourbourg at Madrid in 1865 in the possession of Señor Tro y Ortolano, from whom it derives its name, is a Maya MS. of unknown origin and history. The French government and the Commission Scientifique du Mexique reproduced it in fac-simile by means of chromo-lithography, and Brasseur, with the expenditure of great labor, attempted to translate part of it, which he has published; but in a subsequent work he confesses that he began his reading at the wrong end of the manuscript, which, as Mr. Bancroft humorously remarks, was a “trifling error perhaps in the opinion of the enthusiastic Abbé, but a somewhat serious one as it appears to scientific men.”[603] Mr. Bancroft has reproduced a page of the MS. Troano in his work, and accompanied it with a condensed account from the Abbé’s description as follows: “The original is written on a strip of maguey paper about fourteen feet long and nine inches wide, the surface of which is covered with a whitish varnish, on which the figures are painted in black, red, blue and brown. It is folded fan-like in thirty-five folds, presenting when shut much the appearance of a modern large octavo volume. The hieroglyphics cover both sides of the paper, and the writing is consequently divided into seventy pages, each about five by nine inches, having been apparently executed after the paper was folded, so that the folding does not interfere with the written matter. * * * The regular lines of written characters are uniformly in black, while the pictorial portions, of what may perhaps be considered representative signs, are in red and brown, chiefly the former, and the blue appears for the most part as a background in some of the pages.”[604] Notwithstanding the bigoted spirit exhibited by Bishop Landa in his destruction of the native Maya books in the presence of their sorrowful and helpless owners, he did one act of service for the antiquarian, which will ever entitle him to the gratitude of every student of ancient American civilization. That act was the record which he made of the Maya hieroglyphic alphabet. The Bishop has left us scarcely two and a half octavo pages (of his work as edited by Brasseur de Bourbourg) upon this important subject, yet it is the only known key to the mysteries of Palenque, Copan and the numerous inscriptions found in Yucatan. His explanation of the manner in which letters are combined into words is not clear, and though Mr. Bancroft has translated it literally and introduced parenthetic explanations, still the sense is not very apparent. Brasseur de Bourbourg in his French translation has not succeeded much better, and complains of Landa’s style as being untranslatable. One important fact, however, is deducible from the Bishop’s remarks and example, namely, that the Maya letters were formed into words in much the same order as in the English and other languages which read from the left to the right.[605] Landa’s alphabet is given in the accompanying cut which is an exact photographic reproduction of the original.
Hieroglyphics on the Copan Altar.
Landa adds nothing after this table except the remark: “Of the letters which here fail, this language is wanting and has others added of ours, for other things of which they have need, and already they do not use these characters of theirs, especially the young people who have learned ours.”[606] Landa has left us other hieroglyphic signs, relating to the Maya months and days, which will be given in the next chapter. Many of the hieroglyphics in his alphabet are plainly recognizable in the three Maya MSS. which we have named, though it is quite certain that other signs, which are wanting in his list, are found not only in the MSS. but also among the inscriptions of the several localities we have already described. Besides the attempts made by Brasseur de Bourbourg to decipher the Maya writing, three Américanistes in particular have bestowed labor upon the subject. These are Mr. Wm. Bollaert,[607] M. Hyacinthe de Charencey,[608] and M. Leon de Rosny,[609] the latter of whom is the honorable president of the Société Américaine de France.
Landa’s Alphabet.
By means of Landa’s key, Mr. Bollaert obtained encouraging results from hieroglyphics figured in Stephens’ works. In that author’s Yucatan, vol. ii, page 292, is seen a sculptured figure with hieroglyphics represented on the upper part of the door called Akatzeeb at Chichen-Itza. This tablet is examined by Mr. Bollaert with the following result: “The figure (male) is nude; the cap is like those on the figures at Kabab, and has an ornament round the neck; the large crucible-form before him contains fire, in which some small animal is being burnt or sacrificed. Comparing the hieroglyphs on either side of the figure with the Maya key, I get the following words: Ahau, ‘king’; oc, ‘leg’; Muluc, ‘to unite’; ik, ‘courage’; cib, ‘copal’; eznab, ‘magician’; no, ‘frog’; which may mean that the magician has in the crucible a frog to be sacrificed, in which copal as incense is used. The two lines of hieroglyphs give something like the following: Kings must die—they have courage, and after death are united to those who went before them. The king is with his fathers; the chief and his family burn copal and mourn for his death.”[610] On the tablet of the cross at Palenque, Mr. Bollaert found in squares eznab, “magician”; dz, “a hand”; the “aspiration sign” ⋃; and a part of zip, “tree.” Among the hieroglyphs he traced ahau, “king”; zip, “tree”; akbal, “a plant”; pax, “a musical instrument.” Mr. Bollaert has attempted to read several other inscriptions with no more satisfactory results.[611] One or two of the same scholar’s attempts with the Dresden Codex yield the following: We come to thy presence to implore. The young female implores before the deity, she weeps but has courage. In a group representing a king and a young female, he reads: She has made a vow about the king to the magician, the king is happy. Again: The sacred bird chel is sacrificed, there is weeping; the bride weeps for the bird, she makes a vow or prays for the king, she offers a tortoise, a great feast is given.[612] M. de Charencey translates the hieroglyph found just above the child which is being offered to the bird on the tablet of the cross at Palenque, by the word Hunabku, “the only holy one.” He also finds the name of Kukulcan and eznab, “magician,” the name of a month.[613] M. de Rosny in his able essay on the decipherment of the hieratic writings of Central America has undertaken the solution of this interesting and perplexing problem in a scientific manner, and we have the fullest confidence that his system constructed on Landa’s key will open to us the books and inscriptions of the Mayas. But two of the four parts which constitute the work have been published, still we think sufficient data has been placed at the hands of scholars by M. de Rosny to justify the opinion that if the remainder of his essay should never appear, the work of interpreting some of the Maya writings might be carried on with reasonable certainty. Landa’s key contains seventy-one signs (twenty for the days, eighteen for the months, and thirty-three in the alphabet.) M. de Rosny, by a careful examination of all the hieratic texts of the Mayas which are known, has discovered more than seven hundred different signs. Of this number he has deciphered and classified four hundred and thirty-nine as follows: Alphabetic signs, including Landa’s (of which all the others are but varieties), two hundred and sixty-two; signs of the days, one hundred and fifty-nine; and the eighteen signs of the months given by Landa. All these signs are classified in a double folio plate (Pl. XIII) which we believe deserves to be regarded as the larger portion of the much-sought-for Maya Rosetta stone. Considerable difference of opinion has existed as to the direction in which the hieroglyphics should be read. Brasseur held the view that the proper order was from right to left, and that the beginning of a book was where our books end. This mistake brought down the ridicule of scholars upon the Abbé’s head, when it was discovered that he had begun at the wrong end to translate the Troano MS. Mr. Bollaert says, “I have read from the bottom upwards and from right to left.”[614] Dr. Brinton[615] has suggested some such order as the following arrangement of the word marvellous: