112 



THE ARCHAIC MAYA INSCRIPTIONS. 



So at the proper age they were taken to another temple — a sort of high school, as it 

 were — and shown this sign incorporated into an instructive formula, and then were 

 shown the same formula right over and over again, with equivalent signs substituted 

 for this and some of the others, but retaining its general character so as to impress 

 them in a way they would never forget it. It would not be a bad method of teaching 

 even now. If there were any reason to doubt the character being a sign for thirteen 

 katuns, the two substitutes in the line below would remove it. There not only is the 

 number of katuns designated by the trinal sign for 13 which is used with the great 

 cycle symbol in initial dates, but, for fear the variant katun sign may not be intelligible 

 enough, the ordinary katun head is placed after it as a determinative. Unfortunately 

 the variant in the last line is too badly damaged to be made out distinctly. What the 

 last glyph in all three lines means I do not know, but I suspect them to be variant 

 cycle symbols used determinatively. The middle one is common, and seems always to 

 relate in some way to the beginning of a cycle. The next example I shall give occurs 

 on the same tablet, a short distance from the foregoing one. Some exercises in minor 

 time-periods are gone over, and then the cycle is reverted to, but this time two cycles 

 are dealt with instead of one. 



There are many new characters here, and there is more variety in the substitution ; 



