CENTRAL AMERICAN HIEROGLYPHIC WRITING. 707 



written glyphs, agrees closely with the temple inscription in essential 

 points, and was probably written in Chiapas or Guatemala. 



These manuscripts are on a kind of paper made of the Mag-ue}- plant. 

 A description of one is substantially a description of all, though the 

 size and the number of pages yary. The Troano codex, which will be 

 taken as an example, consists of a strip of mague}^ paper about li feet 

 long and 9 inches wide, both surfaces of which were first coyered with a 

 white paint or varnish. The two faces were then divided into spaces 

 about six inches wide by black or red lines across the strip, in which 

 spaces the characters and figures, in black, brown, red, and sometimes 

 blue, were painted.- The strip was then folded back and forth, like a 

 pocket map, into 35 folds corresponding with the cross lines, repre- 

 senting, when pressed together, the appearance of an ordinary octavo 

 volume. The glj^phs and figures cover both sides of the paper, form- 

 ing 70 pages, the writing and painting having been done apparently 

 after the folding, as the folds do not interfere with it. A page is 

 shown in facsimile in plate iii. 



The order in which this writing — if it may properly be so termed — 

 is to be read was for many years a subject of discussion, some authors 

 contending for one direction, as from left to right, or from the top 

 downward, while some thought that the reading should be in the oppo- 

 site direction. The proper order in which the inscriptions and the 

 text, in part, of the manuscripts is to be read was first pointed out 

 l»y the writer in 1882.« 



In the inscriptions, which usually consists of two, four, or six col- 

 umns, the columns are to be taken by twos or pairs from left to right, 

 and the gl.yp^** i'^ <'^t'ti P^ii' of columns are to be read from left to right 

 and from top to bottom, in the order of the letters in the diagram 

 (fig. 1). Where there is a single column the 

 reading is from the top downward, and in sin- 

 gle horizontal lines it is from left to right. 

 The order in which the glyphs in the codices are 

 to be taken, where there is a regular arrange- 

 ment, is substantially the same. Although the 

 columns ma}^ consist of but two lines in depth 

 they are read in the order a^ b, c, d in the dia- 

 gram, at least in the Dresden, Troano, and Cortesian codices. In 

 the Dresden codex, however, the numeral and time series, some of 

 which are quite long, aro in some cases to be read from right to left 

 by lines across the page, the lines following one another from the 

 bottom upward. Usually there are in tlic inscriptions, besides the 

 glyphs, figures of priests and deities, and s3Mnbolic representations. 

 A considerable portion of almost every page in the codices consists of 



a Study of the Manuscript Troano. 



