119 



A REVIEW OF THE INSCRIPTIONS. 



I have arrived at the stage where a consideration of some of the inscriptions them- 

 selves comes properly in order. As yet I am not master of enough glyphs to fully 

 make out the meaning of a single tablet; but I can decipher some of them sufficiently, 

 I think, to justify the conclusion that no room remains for the record of any historical 

 event. I was very reluctant to accept that belief, for I had entertained a hope that 

 with the decipherment of the glyphs would come a flood of light, revealing all the 

 mysteries of the Maya civilization. But every advance I made in reading the inscrip- 

 tions tended to dissipate that hope, until I was at length unwillingly forced to the 

 conclusion that, primarily, the inscriptions were intended to serve the purpose of 

 calendars for the use of the whole populace ; secondarily, that they were in part text- 

 books designed to assist teachers in the initiation of their pupils into the science of 

 mathematics and chronology; and, thirdly, that they were either objects of veneration 

 or always made accessory to such objects. 



Such formal and unzealous adoration as we can conceive possible to be given to 

 abstract numbers or the multiplication-table was undoubtedly paid to them. We see 

 everywhere priests and their acolytes making offerings to objects constructed purely of 

 numerals. The inference is plain ; the knowledge of numbers had wrought such 

 marvels for them that in the absence of anything more marvelous they deified 

 numerals and worshiped them. But these adoratorios were also school-houses and 

 colleges, and the text of the worshiper became the text-book of the student. In 

 different inscriptions is to be found the entire chronological curriculum ; so they are 

 not unlike Hamlet's players, being abstracts and brief chronicles of time. It is not 

 unlikely that there were peripatetic schools in these Archaic cities, as in Athens. I 

 can picture to myself the venerable teachers ranging their pupils in front of these 

 inscriptions and lecturing them upon the principles and practice of chronology. But 

 far above and beyond their use for purposes of worship or tuition was their service to 

 the people in the capacity of public calendars. 



It may appear absurd, at a first thought, that temples, monuments, and altars should 

 be covered with elaborately carved inscriptions that record nothing but dates and other 

 forms of time reckoning. But a little reflection should convince one that such inscrip- 

 tions, under certain conditions, would not be preposterous, but the wisest and most 

 useful of records. A calendar is an indispensable requisite of civilization. Iu fact, 

 the existence or non-existence of a chronological system is the distinction between the 



