HISTORY OF THE PALENQUE TABLET. 3 



fully performed. While thus engaged, Dr. Matile, who was familiar with Mr. 

 Stephens's works, recognized the Smithsonian tablet as one of the three stone 

 slabs, which, placed together, bore on their surface the sculpture of the famous 

 Grouj) of the Cross, forming the chief ornament of one of the buildings of 

 Palenque, which for this reason has become known as the "Temple of the 

 Gross." The middle slab and that originally joining it on the left have been 

 described and figured by late explorers ; but the one which completed the sculp- 

 tured group, and is now preserved in the Smithsonian building, probably was 

 already broken into fragments before 1832, when Waldeck explored the ruins of 

 Palenque. Stephens, who was there eight years afterward, certainly noticed its 

 scattered pieces. It therefore has not been represented by either of them ; but 

 Del Rio and Dupaix, to whom we are indebted for the earliest reports on the 

 ruins of Palenque, still saw it in its proper place, as I shall have occasion to 

 show hereafter. '•= 



Dr. Matile announced the identification of the tablet in an article entitled 

 " American Ethnology," which was written in 1865, but published in Barnard's 

 " American Journal of Education " for January, 1868. The passage in which 

 he explains the true character of the tablet occurs on page 431 of the Journal. 

 Indeed, a mere comparison of the designs on the Smithsonian slab with the 

 representations of the Palenque slabs belonging to the Group of the Cross, as 

 given by Stephens, shows most plainly that the former is the complement of 

 the latter. Yet the credit of having first pointed out that fact belongs to the 

 above-named gentleman. 



A few years afterward the tablet was again broken, in consequence of an 

 unlucky accident which happened on its being removed to another place in the 

 Smithsonian building. However, it has been successfully restored. Dr. Matile's 

 fac-simile in plaster enabling the artist to replace with perfect precision the 

 injured portions of the sculptured surface ; and it is now exhibited, solidly 

 framed, in the United States Kational Museum (in charge of the Smithsonian 

 Institution), where it attracts considerable attention on the part of the numerous 

 visitors. 



In 1873 the Smithsonian Institution sent a photograph of the tablet to Dr. 

 Philipp J. J. Valcntini, of New York, a gentleman much interested in the study 

 of Mexican and Central American antiquities, and author of a treatise on 

 the Mexican calendar-stone, which appeared first in German in pamphlet form,f 

 and was immediately afterward translated into English by Mr. Stephen Salisbury, 

 Jr., and published in the " Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society " 



* A short notice by Juarros is tlie Urst printed reference to the ruins, as far as I know. It is given in full on 

 page 7. This author's work appeared in 1808-18, Del Rio's report in 1822. 



t Vortrag fiber den Mcxicanischen Calender-Stein, gehalten ron Prof. Ph. Valcntini, am 30. April 1878, 

 etc.; New York, 1878. 



