HOLDEN.) THE MAYA HIEROGLYPHS. 241 
but the rebus for QUETZALCOATL, or rather for CUKULCAN, the Maya 
name for this god. BRASSEUR DE BOURBOURG, as quoted in Ban- 
CROFT’S Native Races, vol. ii, p. 699, foot note, says CUKULCAN, comes 
from kuk or kukul, a bird, which appears to be the same as the quetzal, 
and from can, serpent; so that CUKULCAN in Maya is the same as 
QUETZALCOATL in Aztec. It is to be noticed how checks on the ac- 
curacy of any deciphering of hieroglyphs occur at every point, if we will 
only use them. 
The Maya equivalents of HUITZILOPOCHTLI and TLALOC are un- 
doubtedly buried in the chiffres already deciphered, but we have no means 
of getting their names in Maya from the rebus of the chiffres. 
In the cases of these two gods we got the chiffre, and the rebus is 
still to seek. In the case of Quetzalcoatl or CUKULCAN, the rebus was 
the means of getting the name; and if the names of this divinity had 
not been equivalent in the two tongues, our results would have led us 
to the (almost absurd) conclusion that a god of certain attributes was 
called by his Aztec name in the Maya nations. 
Thus every correct conclusion confirms every former one and is a basis 
for subsequent progress. The results of this analysis are that the Maya 
god CUKULCAN is named in each one of the following chiffres, viz: Nos. 
1009, 265, 2090, 2073, 2021, 3085, 2045, 3073, 3070, 3032, 1865, 265, 268 ?, 
4291? 732? I give the numbers in the order in which they are arranged 
in the card-catalogue. There is, of course, a reason for this order. 
BANCROFT, vol. iii, p. 268, says of QUETZALCOATL that “his symbols 
were the bird, the serpent, the cross, and the flint, representing the 
clouds, the lightning, the four winds, and the thunderbolt.” 
We shall find all of his titles except one, the bird, in what follows. 
We must notice here that in the chiffre 2021 and its congeners the bird 
appears directly over the head of CUKULCAN. It is plainly shown in 
the heliotype which accompanies Professor RAU’s work on the Palenque 
cross, though not so well in our Fig. 48. 
In what has gone before, we have seen that the characters 2021, 2045, 
2073, 3073, 3085, 265, etc., present the portrait and the rebus of CUKUL- 
CAN. It will not be forgotten that in the examination of the question 
as to the order in which the stone inscriptions were read we found a 
number of pairs in Plate LVI, Fig. 48; the characters 2021, etc., being 
one member of each. The other members of the pairs in the Plate LVI 
were 2020, 2044, 2072, 3072, 3084, etc. 264-265 is another example of 
the same pair elsewhere. 
I hoped to find that the name CUKULCAN, or 2021, was associated in 
these pairs with some adjective or verb, and therefore examined the other 
members of the pair. 
In a case like this the card-catalogue is of great assistance; for ex- 
ample, I wish to examine here the chiffres Nos. 2020, 2044, 2072, 3072, 
3084, ete. In the catalogue their cards occur in the same compart- 
ment, arranged so that two cards that are exactly alike are contiguous. 
16 AE 
