208 



BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



[BULL. 28 



and i, figure 46, to express the word il-hui-tl, that is, " the sun's orb ", 

 " day ", " festival ". I drew attention to this figure some years ago,'' 

 but did not at that time interpret it correctly. It occurs on Mexican 

 sculptures in the Berlin Royal Museum of Ethnology (7, figure 45) on 

 the piece opposite the picture of the chalchiuitl, the luminous, bril- 

 liant bead of jadeite. This simple verticillate symbol (n, same fig- 

 ure) also occurs on the celestial shields in Maya manuscripts in 

 connection Avith all sorts of A^ariants of the sun hieroglyph, o. 



The last person on the imperfect right side of the fragment is 

 called, in the accompanying note, Antonio Totoli Pilhuehue. Totol 

 i-pil means " the young turkey ", and this is expressed in the hiero- 



m 



Tl^ 



III II o p q 



Fig. 46. Mexican symbols foi- various articles. 



gly])h by the j^icture of a bird with short wings. But I am not clear 

 as to the other element below it or A^hat syllable it is meant to express. 

 From all that we can make out and determine on fragment VIII 

 (plate xiii) , it is perfectly obvious that it is A^ery closely analogous, on 

 the one hand, to our fragment VI (plate xi) and, on the other hand, 

 to page 34 of the Goupil-Boban atlas and the so-called Vergara codex. 

 The most striking characteristic of all these manuscripts is the pecul- 

 iar SA^stem of notation — the ones being denoted by marks instead of 

 dots and always combined in groups of five — and also the complicated 



" Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, 188S, v. 20, pp. 53 and 55. 



