30 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
at his disposal, he speaks with an authority not equaled by that of any other 
early European writer. 
Landa describes the manners and customs of the Maya of Yucatan at 
considerable length, giving even a few tantalizing glimpses of their history. 
By far his most important contribution, however, is his description of the 
native calendar, in which he gives drawings of the hieroglyphs for the 20 
days of the Maya month and of 18 out of the 19 divisions of the Maya year,’ 
and also a series of signs, which he claimed were the letters of the Maya 
alphabet. The last was at once hailed with acclaim by Americanists as the 
long-sought key to the hieroglyphic writing, and a number of investigators, 
more credulous than critical, hastened into print with so-called “‘interlinear 
translations” of the texts. In every case, however, these have broken down 
under “‘higher criticism,” until it has finally become necessary to abandon 
all hope of translating the Maya inscriptions by means of the Landa alphabet, 
some even going so far as to brand it as a “Spanish fabrication.’” 
But if we must reject Landa’s alphabet in its entirety, as a phonetic key 
to the inscriptions, as now seems necessary, we are still deeply indebted to 
him for his illuminating observations on the Maya calendar, by means of 
which only we have been able partially to decipher the Maya writing. 
The first real advance in interpreting the Maya writing was made by 
Professor Ernst Foérstemann, of the Royal Library of Dresden, who in the 
decade from 1880-1890, while Maudslay was doing valuable service in the 
field, published a number of studies on a Maya hieroglyphic manuscript in 
the Royal Library at Dresden. Using Landa’s values for the day and month 
signs, Forstemann finally worked out the basic principles of Maya chro- 
nology, and in 1887 he announced the fundamental discovery that the long 
numbers of the Dresden manuscript designate particular days in Maya 
history and are all counted from the same starting-point, a sort of Maya 
birth of Christ, to borrow an analogy from our own chronology.’ 
Curiously enough, an American scholar, Mr. J. T. Goodman, of 
Alameda, California, working independently upon different subject-matter, 
1. é., the inscriptions on the monuments, and without knowledge of Forste- 
mann’s researches, duplicated the latter’s remarkable discovery a little later, 
1883-95. Forstemann seems to have made his discovery as early as April 
1. anda gives no sign for Uayeb (1881, pp. 96, 97). 
*Valentini (1880). Many have been the attempts to decipher the manuscripts by means of the Landa alphabet. 
Brasseur de Bourbourg was the first in this field (1869—1870); and he was quickly followed by others, de Rosny (1876), 
Le Plongeon (1885), La Rochefoucauld (1888), Thomas (1893), and Cresson (1892, 1892a, and 1892b). These 
various attempts to explain the Maya writing on a purely phonetic basis have entirely broken down, and at present 
this “school” has few followers. See Brinton, 1895, pp. 14-17, for an able summary of these studies. 
3F6rstemann, 1887. An English translation of this important paper was published by the Bureau of American 
Ethnology (see Forstemann, 1904, pp. 393-472). Tozzer (1907, pp. 153-159) gives a brief sketch of Férstemann’s 
life and a fairly complete bibliography. Only a few of the more important titles bearing directly on the present 
investigation, however, have been included in the bibliography at the end of this memoir. The results of his 
studies on the manuscripts are given in most complete form in his commentaries on the three codices, Férstemann, 
1901, 19024, and 1903, all three of which have been translated into English, and the first and most important, 
published as volume tv, No. 2, of the papers of the Peabody Museum (1906). He published two facsimile repro- 
ductions of the Dresden Codex (1880 and 1892), thus making this important manuscript accessible for general 
study, and also wrote a large number of shorter articles, only a few of which deal with the inscriptions and only one 
with those at Copan (1904a). His especial province, however, was the manuscripts, and here he easily ranks first. 
