64 ABOEIGINAL WRITING IN MEXICO, ETC. 



one of the events narrated or indicated by the surrounding glyphs. M. de 

 Charencey thinks we have to recognize, in all probability, in the Palenquean 

 inscriptions litanies sung by the priests in honor of the Maya gods.== In 

 advancing this opinion he evidently had the sacred character of the temple in 

 view ; but I must confess that I cannot reconcile the chanting of litanies with 

 the frequent signs bearing on the division of time, unless, indeed, the glyphs in 

 question were intended to form a kind of calendar serving to regulate the succes- 

 sion of those religious rites. 



Some of the monolithic idols or statues at Copan, in Honduras, which hare 

 been described by Mr. Stephens, bear glyphs obviously resembling in general 

 appearance those of Palenque — a circumstance from which a relationship between 

 the ancient inhabitants of these two districts may be inferred. At any rate, 

 their civilization must have been essentially the same. For comparisons I have 

 to refer to Stephens's work on Central America, which contains a full account 

 of the ruins of Copan, accompanied by many illustrations. One of them repre- 

 sents the flat top of a stone altar, six feet square, on which are sculptured thirty- 

 six glyphs, arranged in rows as on the Palenquean tablets. This view is given 

 on page 141 of the first, and again on page 454 of the second volume, in this 

 instance in connection with a small fi'agment of the Dresden Codex, inserted by 

 Stephens in order to show the resemblance of its characters to those of Palenque 

 and Copan. In doing so, he certainly manifested his keen faculty of discrimi- 

 nation ; but his inference " that the Aztecs or Mexicans, at the time of the con- 

 quest, had the same written language with the people of Copan and Palenque " 

 arose from the delusion, shared by Humboldt, Kingsborough and others, of 

 seeing in the Dresden Codex a manuscript of Mexican origin. 



Though there is undeniably much similarity in the general character of 

 the glyphs of Copan and Palenque, the difference in their details is very striking 

 — indeed so great as to render it plausible that a long period intervened between 

 the building of the two cities, during which considerable changes in the shajje of 

 the characters took place. In fact, some archaeologists, taking into consideration 

 the peculiarities of the styles of architecture and sculpture in both cities, regard 

 Copan as the older of the two.f By these statements, however, I merely intend 

 to convey a suggestion, and not a definite opinion ; for there is a possibility that 

 the characters employed by the ancient people of Copan were originally more or 

 less difi'erent from those in use among the builders of Palenque. 



* De Charencey : Essai de Dechiffrement etc., in : Actes de la Societe Philologique, Tom. I, No. 3, Mars 1870, 

 r. 50. 



t " The ruins of Copan, and the corresponding monuments which I examined in the valley of the Cham- 

 elicon, are distinguished by singular and elaborately carved monoliths, which seem to have been replaced in 

 Palenque by equally elaborate basso-relievos, belonging, it would also seem, to a later and more advanced period 

 of a.TV'—Squier: The States of Central America; New York, 18.58, p. 241. 



