28 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
ception of the city than can be obtained from a personal examination on the 
grounds. 
In 1917 he was at Copan for four days with Mr. John Held, jr., as artist 
and draftsman,' again in 1918 for two days,” and again in 1919 for four days,’ 
the last two trips being made without assistants. 
All the writer’s notes on the Copan inscriptions accumulated during 
these seven different visits have been embodied in the present study— 
those made in 1910 and 1912, as well as those made in 1915-1919 for the 
Carnegie Institution, and acknowledgment is here made to the Managing 
Board of the School of American Archeology for permission to include the 
work of the first two years in this final report. 
HISTORY OF THE DECIPHERMENT OF THE MAYA HIEROGLYPHIC WRITING. 
Before attempting to define the scope of the present investigation (see 
the next section), it is first necessary to review the history of the decipherment 
of the Maya hieroglyphic writing, for it is only from that perspective that 
the especial province of this research can be properly comprehended. 
From Stephens’s time down to the present day, the Maya hieroglyphic 
writing, probably the foremost intellectual achievement of ancient America, 
has been a storm-center of scientific investigation. Perhaps no other problem 
connected with American archeology has excited so much attention or 
provoked so much ill-considered speculation. The Maya themselves have 
been variously derived from the ancient Egyptians; from the Ten Lost 
Tribes of Israel; from the Javanese; and even from the visionary folk of 
fabled Atlantis;* but it has only been within the past three decades that we 
have at last begun to know something definite about them, partially to 
decipher the intricate characters of their strange graphic system, and to 
approximate its general meaning. ; 
The basic discovery upon which rests all subsequent research in this 
field was the finding of a manuscript history of Yucatan in the archives of 
1See Morley, 1917¢, pp. 285-289. See ibid., 1918a, pp. 269-276. 3See ibid., 1919, pp. 320, 321. 
4The origin of the Maya civilization has been a fruitful field of inquiry since the days of the Spanish Conquest, 
when the conquistadores first beheld the great aboriginal cities of Middle America; and there is scarcely a country 
on the face of the globe which has not at one time or another been identified as the original home of the Maya race. 
From Lord Kingsborough’s nine large folio volumes, which sought to prove that the Maya were descended from the 
Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, down to the present time, innumerable earnest but misguided attempts have been made 
to derive the Maya directly from some nation or people of the Old World. Some indeed have even gone so far as to 
reverse this at least natural procedure, and have contended that Egypt was colonized from America, claiming for 
the Maya an antiquity of more than 11,000 years (Le Plongeon, 1886). Unfortunately, such aberrations as these 
have not entirely disappeared before the advance of modern research, since we find within the past decade earnest 
searchers after the truth solemnly connecting the Maya civilization with the comparatively recent cultures of Java 
and southern India (Arnold and Frost, 1909), or, by more or less circuitous routes of migration, with the equally 
remote civilization of ancient Egypt. (Smith, 1916-1917, pp. 190-195, 241-246.) The last even contends that 
the elephant’s head occurs as a decorative element on Stela B at Copan, (1915-1916, pp. 340, 341, 425, 593-595). 
He has been ably refuted by Tozzer (1916, p. 592), Spinden (1916, pp. 592, 593), Goldenweiser (1916, pp. 531-533), 
and Means (1916, pp. 533, 534). Such extravagant hypotheses would scarcely merit even passing notice were it 
not for the fact that their very spectacularity renders them peculiarly attractive to the general public. It is, 
therefore, perhaps not superfluous to repeat that the Maya civilization was a native American product, developed 
in its entirety in the New World, and probably not far from the region where its extensive remains are now to be 
found. 
