THE MAYAN CIVILIZATION 



115 



signs and dates would make possible records of consid- 

 erable accuracy. There seems to be no possibility of 

 purely lit (Mary inscriptions. While progress will neces- 

 sarily be slow there is no reason for despair and without 

 doubt the greater portion of Mayan inscriptions will 

 finally be deciphered. 



As an example of the phonetic use of signs in the 

 building up of hieroglyphs let us take the common sign 

 kin, meaning "sun." This sign appears regularly in the 

 glyphs for the world directions east and west, the Mayan 



Fig. 43. 



South. 



Hieroglyphs of the Four Directions: East, North, West, 



Fiji. 14. Hieroglyphs containing the Phonetic Element kin: a-b, 

 hin; c.h-hin: <1, clii-kin; e-f, yax-kin; g, kan-kin. 



names being HI: in and chikin, and also in the month sign 

 Yaxkiny and sometimes in that for Kankin. It also 

 appears as the sign for the lowest period in the time 

 count having the value of a single day and called kin. 

 The sun sign pure and simple is a circle with four notches 

 on the inner side in which we should doubtless see 4 the 

 four directions. The beard which is often attached to 

 the kin sign may belong to the face of the sun god since 

 hifl bearded face is sometimes used as a substitute for 

 the simple kin sigD in certain posil ions. All the words so 



