ir 
1898-99.] DECIPHERING HIEROGLYPHIC INSCRIPTIONS OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 123 
unknown, and gladly read what they had written on the subject. 
Recently, however, having no special work of decipherment on hand, he 
took up the Maya problem, after a course of Brasseur de Bourbourg’s 
History of the Civilized Nations of Mexico and Central America, and 
Dr. Brinton’s Maya Chronicles, when light dawned upon him, but not 
through the unsuccessful method of science. He found that the 
hieroglyphics were not alphabetic nor syllabic, but purely ideographic 
like the original Chinese symbols, and that numbers, not employed 
always as such, but in the rebus form, played a large part in this 
peculiar writing. All the world is familiar with 
Vays Ut 
Vaya tb 
Wel uy ae 
Ne Shes Tate aay 
This, being interpreted, reads: “ Too wise you are, too wise you be ; 
I see you are too wise for me.” This is pretty nearly the way in which 
the Maya-Quiches wrote, as the sequel will show. 
CHAPTER IV. 
THE NEW SYSTEM OF READING THE HIEROGLYPHICS; THE GROUPS 
ONS LAE - LER: 
Entirely discarding the material provided by Landa, the writer 
sought a solution of the Maya problem in Old World systems of 
writing which are hieroglyphic or have been deduced from hieroglyphic 
originals, and in this was utterly unsuccessful. His knowledge of the 
Hittite and its descendants clearly indicated that the Maya system was 
not related to them, but as the Maya-Quiche languages are preposing, 
that is, languages making use of prepositions, he expected to find links 
in Egyptian, Assyrian and Chinese. Nothing definite, however, could 
be obtained from any of these sources, although the old Chinese symbols, 
which constitute the bases of the 214 keys or radicals, exhibit some 
affinity to the Maya system. Discarding external aids, he found that 
the symbol Ahau occurs several times in the Palenque tablet, and that, 
in the fourth character from the left in the ninth line on the left side of 
the inscription, there are two Ahaus, the first being placed under one 
ball, standing for 4uz, one, and the second resting upon three balls, 
which as three, should be rendered by ox, or should be regarded as the 
sign of plurality, 06. Taking the latter tentatively, the group would 
