56 ABORIGINAL WRITING IN MEXICO, ETC. 



astrological or astronomical, and more or less complicated. To offer a key at 

 present would appear a premature proceeding."* 



There appeared in 1876 and 77, at Paris, the first numbers of a richly illus- 

 trated and costly folio work by M. Leon de Rosny, entitled " Essai sur le Dechiffre- 

 mcnt de I'Ecriture Hieratique de I'Amerique Centrale." The portion of the work 

 which has thus far appeared embraces a well-written introduction and an analysis 

 of the signs used in the manuscripts of Maya origin, but presents, as far as I 

 could see in the short time which I was permitted to bestow on its examination, no 

 additional efforts in the line of decipherment. It produces a rather comical impres- 

 sion that M. de Rosny criticises with some severity the achievements of De Char- 

 encey, his colleague in the same field of investigation. De Rosny gives on Plate 

 II of his work a very defective representation of the Palenquean Group of the 

 Cross, including the right slab, which shows characters absolutely unlike those 

 on the original in the Smithsonian building. I cannot understand M. de Rosny's 

 motive for introducing in a work of strictly scientific character an illustration 

 totally diiferent from what it pui'ports to represent. 



Mr. William Bollaert made an attempt to decipher by means of Landa's 

 signs a plate of the Dresden Codex, but without the desired success, for he says 

 in a letter addressed in 1875 to M. de Rosny : " I did not find Landa's alphabet 

 of the use I hoped for."f 



After the foregoing it hardly will be necessary to point out the total insuffi- 

 ciency of the results obtained by those savants who have tried to translate the 

 existing manuscript records of Maya origin. The key applied to that purpose 

 has failed to render the desired service, though the close connection between 

 Landa's signs and those of the codices in question is undeniable. The Yucatecs 

 and Central Americans, it appears probable, employed in their writing certain 

 characters as equivalents for sounds, perhaps syllabic, and at the same time, 

 possibly to a great extent, conventional figures imparting a definite meaning. 

 I cannot reconcile myself to the idea that the characters used by those compara- 

 tively civilized nations should re^^resent nothing beyond a somewhat systema- 

 tized picture-writing, while the neighboring Mexicans, as has been shown, 

 already had made some advances toward phonetization. On the other hand, I 

 strongly doubt whether the Mayas and kindred races ever went so far as to 

 express the elementary sounds of their speech by corresponding signs — in short, 

 whether they possessed a written language in our sense. In dilating on the 

 Yucatec characters. Bishop Landa, I repeat, evidently ventured upon a toi>ic 

 with which he was not sufficiently familiar. If, however, contrary to my expec- 

 tations, they should in future prove to be of greater use than they have thus far 

 been, I shall with great satisfaction modify my present opinion. 



* De Charencey : Eecherches sur le Codex Troano ; p. 13. 

 t De Rosny : Essai sur I'Ecriture Hieratique etc., p. 13. 



