MORLEY] INTRODUCTION TO STUDY OF MAYA HIEROGLYPHS 27 



of phoneticism among the Maya glyphs, all attempts to reduce^ them 

 to a phonetic system or alphabet, which will interpret the writing, 

 have signally failed. The first and most noteworthy of these so-called 

 "Maya alphabets," because of its genuine antiquity, is that given by 

 Bishop Landa in his invaluable Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan, fre- 

 quently cited in Chapter I. Writing in the year 1565, within 25 

 years of the Spanish Conquest, Landa was able to obtain characters 

 for 27 sounds, as follows: Three a's, two h's, c, t, e, li, i, ca, Jc, two Vs, 

 m, n, two o's, pp, p, cu, leu, two x^s, two v's, z. This alphabet, which 

 was first published in 1864 by Abb6 Brasseur de Bourbourg (see 

 Landa, 1864), was at once heralded by Americanists as the long- 

 awaited key which would unlock the secrets of the Maya writing. 

 Unfortunately these confident expectations have not been realized, 

 and all attempts to read the glyphs by means of this alphabet or of 

 any of the numerous others^ which have appeared since, have com- 

 pletely broken down. 



This failure to establish the exclusive phonetic character of the 

 Maya glyphs has resulted in the general acceptance of the second 

 theory, that the signs are ideographic. Doctor Briiiton (1894 b : p. 14) , 

 however, has pointed out two facts deducible from the Landa alpha- 

 bet which render impossible not only the complete acceptance of this 

 second theory but also the absolute rejection of the first: (1) That a 

 native writer was able to give a written character for an unfamiliar 

 sound, a sound, moreover, which was without meaning to him, as, 

 for example, that of a Spanish letter; and (2) that the characters 

 he employed for this purpose were also used in the native writings. 

 These facts Doctor Brinton regards as proof that some sort of 

 phonetic writing was not unknown, and, indeed, both the inscrip- 

 tions and the codices establish the truth of this contention. For 

 example, the sign in a, figure 13, has the phonetic value Mn, and 

 the sign in h the phonetic value yax. Jn the latter glyph, however, 

 only the upper part (reproduced in c) is to be regarded as the essen- 

 tial element. It is strongly indicative of phoneticism therefor(> to 

 find the sound yaxTcin, a combination of these two, expressed by the 

 sign found in d. Similarly, the character representing the phonetic 

 value Jcin is found also as an element in the glyphs for the words likin 



1 Brasseur de Bourbourg, the "discoverer" of Landa's manuscript, added several signs of his own 

 invention to the original Landa alphabet. See his introduction to the Codex Troano published by the 

 French Government. Leon de Rosny published an alphabet of 29 letters with numeroiis variants. 

 Later Dr. F. Le Plongeon defmed 23 letters with variants and made elaborate interpretations of the texts 

 with this " alphabet " as his key. Another alphabet was that proposed by Dr. Hilbome T. Cresson, which 

 included syllables as well as letters, and with which its originator also essayed to read the texts. Scarce 

 worthy of mention are the alphabet and volume of interlinear translations from both the inscriptions 

 and the codices published by F. A. de la Rochefoucauld. This is very fantastic and utterly without value 

 miless, as Doctor Brinton says, it be taken "as a warning against the intellectual aberrations to which 

 students of these ancient mysteries seem peculiarly prone." The late Dr. Cyrus Thomas, of the Biu-eau 

 ol American Ethnology, was the last of those who endeavored to interpret the Maya texts by means of 

 alphabets, though he was perhaps the best of them all, much of his work in this particular respect wiU 

 not stand. 



