INTRODUCTION TO STUDY OF MAYA HIEROGLYPHS 



65 



Several examples of this glypli are shown in figure 24. This sign is 

 composed of four constant elements: 



1 . The trinal superfix. 



2. The pair of comblike lateral appendages. 



3. The tun sign (see fig. 29, a, I). 



4. The trinal subfix. 



In addition to these four constant elements there is one variable 

 element which is always found between the pair of combHke lateral 

 appendages. In figure 24, a, h, e, this is a grotesque head; in c, a 

 natural head; and in d, one of the 20 day-signs, Ik. This element 

 varies greatly throughout the inscriptions, and, judging from its 

 central position in the "introducing glyph" (itself the most prominent 

 character in every inscription in which it occurs), it must have had 

 an exceedingly important meaning.^ A variant of the comblike 

 appendages is shown in figure 24, c, e, in which these elements are 



^^if^ 



/ 



Fig. 24. Initial-series "introducing glypli 



replaced by a pair of fishes. However, in such cases, all of wliich 

 occur at Copan, the treatment of the fins and tail of the fish strongly 

 suggests the elements they replace, and it is not improbable, there- 

 fore, that the comblike appendages of the ''introducing glyph" are 

 notliing more nor. less than conventionahzed fish fins or tails ; in other 

 words, that they are a kind of glyphic synecdoche in which a part 

 (the fin) stands for the whole (the fish). That the original form of 

 this element was the fish and not its conventionalized fui (*) seems i] 

 to be indicated by several facts: (1) On Stela D at Copan, where * 

 only fuU-figure glyphs are presented,^ the two combhke appendages of 

 the " introducing glyph " appear unmistakably as two fishes. (2) In 

 some of the earhest steles at Copan, as Stelae 15 and P, while these 

 elements are not fish forms, a head (fish ?) appears with the conven- 

 tionalized comb element in each case. The writer believes the inter- 

 pretation of this phenomenon to be, that at the early epoch in which 



1 Mr. Bowditch (1910: App. VIII, 310-18) discusses tlie possible meanings of this element. 



2 For explanation of the term " full-figure glj'phs," see p. 67. 



43508°— Bull. 57—15 5 



