504 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 



A flag (fig. 15) pantli suggests pa. A picture of a stone, tetl, 

 highly conventionalized, stood for ter, making Pater. A prickly 

 pear, nochtli, the fig of the castus opuntia, was used for recalling the 

 syllable nos and another stone, tetl, the ter, making noster. In the 

 same way (fig. 16) water, ail, stood for an a sound and agave, metl, 

 for men making amen. 



The attempt made by Bishop Diego de Landa 1 to furnish an 

 alphabet for the interpretation of the Maya 

 hieroglyphics, as shown by Valentini (1880), 

 is a "Spanish fabrication" and entirely un- 

 workable when applied to the decipherment 

 of the hieroglyphic writing. The " alphabet" 

 illustrates exactly the same method as that 

 just pointed out. Here Landa chose a native 

 word beginning with the initial sound he 



Fig. 14. . . 



desired to write. A picture or symbol was 

 then drawn to represent this word and this came to stand for the initial 

 sound of the word. The picture of a man's footprint stood for one 

 of the sounds for h, the Maya word for road being he. 



The hieroglyphic writing of the Mayas, however, does not serve 

 as well as that of the Nahuas to illustrate the various steps in the 

 development of writing as a whole. There is far less known in regard 

 to the phonetic components of the Maya glyphs. 



In view of the higher devel- 

 opment of the calendar system 

 found among the Mayas, we 

 might naturally presuppose a 

 corresponding higher develop- IG " 15 ' 



ment of the art of writing and yet Forstemann (1886, p. 2), Schell- 

 has (1886, p. 77), Brinton (1886, a), and Seler (1888) all seem to 

 agree that the Maya hieroglyphics are essentially ideographic, with 

 a number of constant phonetic elements which are used only to a 

 comparatively slight extent. Up to the present time a correspond- 

 ing development among the Mayas of the rebus form of writing 



que avian de tomar de Coro, y lo mismo usavan algunos, que no confiavan de su Memoria en las Confesiones 

 para acordarse de sus Pecados, llevandolos pintados con sus Caracteres (como los que de nosotros se con- 

 fiesan por escrito) que era cosa de ver, y para alabar a Dios, las :nvenciones, que para efecto, de las cosas 

 de su salvacion buscaban, y usaban." 



Las Casas in his Apologetica Historia de las Indias, a new edition of which is available (1909), chap. 

 CCXXXV, writes: " Y no sabiendo leer nuestra escritura, escribir todo la doctrina ellos por sus figuras y 

 caracteres muy ingeniosamente, poniendo la flgura que correspondera en la voxysonidaanuestrovocablo; 

 asi como dijesernos amen, ponian pintada una como fuente, y luego y un maguey, que en su tengua 

 frisaba con amen, porque llanianlo ametl, y asf de todo lo demas; yo he visto mucha parte de la doctrina 

 cristiana escripta por sus figuras e imagines que la leian por ellas como yo la lela per nuestra Ictra en una 

 carta, y esto no es artificio de ingenio poco admirable. 



i See Landa, 1864, p. 320. 



