INSCRIPTIONS OF THE EARLY PERIOD. 65 
its favor. For example, if the first, 9.3.6.17.18, were the value originally 
intended for 11 Eznab 1 Kankin here, it would have a peculiar fitness, as 
being just two days before the end of a tun in the Long Count: 9.3.7.0.0. 
On the other hand, there are strong reasons for believing that Altars 
X and Y and Stele 16 and 17 are closely related; possibly X and Y originally 
having been the altars associated with Stele 16 and 17. If this is true, the 
second date, 9.5.19.12.18, was probably the one intended, since Stela 17 is 
known to have been erected some time in Katun 6 (p.go). This second value 
for 11 Eznab 1 Kankin, moreover, is only 102 days before the end of Katun 
Beet e.5.0.0.0.0.0. 
The importance of katun, lahuntun, and hotun-endings in the Maya 
system of counting time can not be overestimated,! and it is not at all 
improbable that the stela with which Altar X was originally associated may 
have recorded the date 9.6.0.0.0 9 Ahau 3 Uayeb. Indeed, Stela 17 itself 
may be this very monument, since it surely dates from Katun 6 and could 
hardly have been other than 9.6.0.0.0 or 9.6.10.0.0. 
In the present state of knowledge it is difficult, indeed unsafe, to press 
the evidence available as to the age of Altar X further than to state that this 
altar almost certainly may be assigned to one of the three dates suggested, 
with the probabilities in favor of the second. 
Gordon? suggests the reading 4.6.0.0.0.0 11 Ahau 3 Kankin for this date, 
based upon an exceedingly ingenious explanation of the decorative elements 
on the monument, 7. ¢., the bands and human figures. This reading is more 
than 250,000 years earlier than the earliest contemporaneous date found 
anywhere else in the Maya inscriptions, and for this reason alone it should 
be accepted with reservation. Its rejection, however, rests on firmer 
the interpretation he suggests for it. ‘The date actually recorded in al, B1, 
as we have seen, is not 11 Ahau 3 Kankin, but 11 Eznab 1 Kankin. Been 
admitting that the month coefficient looks as much like 3 as 1, it is impossible 
to identify the day-sign in Ai as Ahau. A study of the forms for Ahau’® 
elsewhere and also in this same text at H2 discloses no other form which 
bears the slightest resemblance to this, while its resemblance to the sign 
for Eznab on the other hand is striking. For these two reasons, then, 
(1) the inherent historical impossibility of such a remote date and (2) the 
impossibility of the day-sign recorded being Ahau, the writer has das 
Gordon’s reading. 
Some of the remaining glyphs of this text are familiar, but of unksiovin 
meaning, as cl, F2, Gi, and G2. The last glyph, 42, as already noted, 
3 Ahau. 
1This point is fully covered in Appendix VII and its presentation will not be anticipated here. 
2Gordon, 19024, p. 141. 
3Bowditch, 1910, plate 6, and in Appendix X. 

