480 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 28 



44 to 45 (see Seler's article in this journal, 1888, pages 68 and 09 of 

 the special reprint). 



Two pictures occurring in this place can also be seen in another 

 passage of this manuscript. First, we find the two figures seated 

 back to back on page 22, on the lower right, as the last of the upper 

 row of glyphs. Here is more distinctly to be seen than in the passage 

 just mentioned that instead of heads they have two half (rising or 

 setting) suns. I can not positively assert that there is a reference 

 here to a new year, since I have not succeeded thus far in under- 

 standing the calendar date of the beginning of the various tonala- 

 matls of the manuscript (which w^ould be a very important step 

 in advance). A single, apparently quite naked, person of this form 

 often appears in the manuscript; for instance, there is one on page 

 58 on the right, and even with head downward, together with a 

 Venus sign, on pages 57b and 58b. If this should not be intended 

 to represent persons, but cloud pictures behind which a star rises or 

 sets, my interpretation in regard to the new year would not be 

 aifected. I may add that Doctor Seler, in his Charakter der Maya- 

 Handschriften, page 9 of the special reprint, really regards them as 

 representations of human beings. 



We might compare the picture on the left of the page 33c with the 

 deity inclosed in a sack; but we must observe that Doctor Seler 

 (Charakter der MaA^a-Handschriften, page 88 of the special reprint), 

 probably correctly, takes this to be a hollow in a tree (the cloud tree). 



I am inclined to see another kind of designation for the close of 

 the year on page 53, below^, of the Dresden manuscript, to which T 

 must here confine myself. There we see a dead woman suspended 

 by a rope, which is fastened to astronomic signs. Above her are 

 eight glyphs arranged in groups of four in two perpendicular rows. 

 The third glyph in the second row has in the middle the same 8- 

 shaped figure, but this time in a perpendicular position. I take the 

 sign attached to the right of this to be the abbreviated glyph for the 

 west or the Ix year (see Schellhas, Die Maya-Handschrift zu Dres- 

 den, 1886, page 70) ; but the one added on the left, it seems to me, 

 IS not the expected sign for the north, but a human arm, as if it were 

 an allusion to the hanged woman. Is not the hanging figure intended 

 for the Waaler goddess Xnuc, and the whole meant to represent the 

 death or end of a Muluc year, the beginning of an Ix year? It is 

 probably meant for 13 Muluc and 1 Ix, but this is not absolutely cer- 

 tain, especially as the periodic series, Avhich is singularly com23osed of 

 54X177, 9X148, and 6X178 days, still puzzles me greatly (see 

 another conception of the hanged woman in Schellhas, same place, 

 page 45 ) . 



In the two passages which have been discussed more in detail, 

 pages 68 and 53, we see the sign resembling an oo , and this we must 



