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BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



[BULL. 28 



page solves the problem mentioned above I will give a sort of copy 

 of it: 



In connection with this I would make the following observations: 



1. Wliile the copy shows large vacant spaces, the original, like all 

 the sheets of the manuscript, is wholly without vacant spaces, since 

 the Maya numerals occupy far more room than the European. 



2. The numerals 1 to 40 in the three left-hand columns represent 

 forty different hieroglyphs. All the rest of the space is taken up 

 with numbers, twenty-three day signs (always the same, Ahau) and 

 three montli signs (on the left below, Cumku, Kayab, Zip). 



3. This page, like most of the pages of the manuscript, is imperfect 

 at the top, only detached portions of the hieroglyphs 1 to 3, 17, and 29, 

 as well as of the four topmost numbers (which I have restored by 

 conjecture), being left. Were it not for this ever-recurring loss of 

 important passages our knowledge of Ma5^a would be far more ad- 

 vanced than it is. 



4. I have ventured to correct two clerical errors in my transcrip- 

 tion. In the first place, the date of the month 18 Zip, where the writer 

 has set down 18 Uo, that is, the second instead of the third period, 

 the characters for the two being very similar; secondly, the IX in 

 IX Ahau in the lower right-hand corner, w^iere the manuscript reads 

 VIII, because a dot coincides with the red border below. 



I shall first consider the numbers and the month and day signs ap- 

 pertaining to them, and I shall then try as far as possible to explain 

 the forty hieroglyphs on the left. The author of the manuscript 

 doubtless wrote these hieroglyphs in order to make the numbers more 

 intelligible, while we, on the contrary, are compelled to penetrate the 



