COPAN. 59 



heads, which are difficult to describe in detail. Below the face of the principal figure 

 is a grotesque mask with a cross-bar ornament hanging from its mouth. The shoulders 

 seem to have been covered with the usual cape of flattened plates, which is almost 

 completely hidden by a number of other ornaments. The breastplate (coloured red) 

 varies considerably fiom the usual form. The serpents' heads on the ends of it are of 

 the customary type, but instead of a stiff panel connecting them they are joined by a 

 conventional representation of a snake's body, which curves downwards and encloses a 

 human head ornament in the loop. 



Grotesque heads (themselves furnished with serpents' heads as head-dresses) with 

 hands issue from the open serpents' mouths at the ends of the breastplate. 



The girdle and apron differ from the usual design only in the treatment of details. 

 A jagua's skin with a fringed edge hangs from the waist. The lower part of the legs 

 and feet are almost entirely broken away. 



Above the head of the principal figure is a large grotesque mask without a lower 

 jaw. There is a deep hole where the nose should be, and it seems possible that a rather 

 prominent nose may have been carved out of a separate stone with a tenon to fix it 

 into this hole. Above this large mask are three smaller masks one above the other. 



The ornament which runs behind the uppermost mask and across the face of the 

 monument baffles description. It has been left uncoloured in the Plate : on one side 

 of it is the upper part of a serpent's head with a three-lobed ornament hanging from 

 its upper jaw, and behind this a piece of tiger's skin. It is possible that the scrolls 

 which pass behind the central mask may be meant to indicate a snake's body, and they 

 appear to be attached by a disk or knot and two loops to an ornament like the half of 

 a breastplate. 



There remains now only to be mentioned the ornament which was probably attached 

 to the shoulders, and hangs down on either side of the principal figure. It first comes 

 into view beneath the elbows, in the form of two fringed disks or shields, and to these 

 are attached two entwined and feathered snakes with ornaments hanging from their 

 mouths ; but the damage done to this part of the monument is so great that the design 

 has been restored (in dotted lines) principally from the shape of the scars left on the 

 stone where the carved surface has been broken away. 



It was not possible to take satisfactory photographs of the whole of the back of this 

 monument, owing to its nearness to the steep slope of the pyramidal foundation (Plate I. 

 No. 16). Plate LXXXVIII. therefore gives only photographs taken from the plaster 

 cast, and Plate LXXXIX. drawings made after careful comparison of the cast with 

 a number of photographs of the original. 



