INSCRIPTIONS OF THE MIDDLE PERIOD. 161 
g.11.0.0.0, but the actual making of them, the carving, was intrusted to 
different hands. In two cases, Stele 2 and 3, representations of the human 
figure were attempted, Stela 3 being the more successful, as well as the 
more ambitious, since it has two figures. One, Stela 23, shows a side pre- 
sentation of the human figure, the only example of its kind at Copan. The 
other four were inscribed with glyphs on all four sides and vary in excellence 
in the following order, the first being the crudest: Stele 12, 13, 10, and Ig. 
Finally, although differing considerably in technique, all seven may safely 
be assigned to the same hotun-ending. 
We come next to a period of some perplexity, namely, the katun after 
g.11.0.0.0. Following this latter date, there seems to have been a hiatus 
in the sequence of the monuments at Copan for two hotuns, since there are 
no sculptures, either stele or altars, that can be assigned to the period 
between 9.11.0.0.0 and 9.11.15.0.0, on which latter date Stela 1 and the East 
Altar of Stela 5 were erected. The next hotun, 9.12.0.0.0, seems to have been 
marked by the erection of two altars but no stele—the West Altar of Stela 5 
and the Altar of Stela r. At least no stela has yet been found recording this 
date. The uncertainty alluded to above, in regard to these four monuments, 
lies first in the possibility that the dates of these three altars may not be 
correctly deciphered as given, a possibility, however, which the writer 
believes to be remote, and second, in the fact that the East Altar of Stela 5 
apparently should be associated with Stela 1 and not with Stela 5, the altar 
now associated with Stela 1 belonging elsewhere. These points will receive 
further attention later, and since the dates suggested above are probably 
correct, these four monuments will be presented in the following order: 
Stela 1, the East and West Altars of Stela 5, and the altar of Stela 1. 
STELLATE 
Provenance: On the second step of the stairway on the western slope 
of Mound g at the southeastern corner of the Mid- 
dle Court, Main Structure. (See plate 6.) 
Date: g.11.15.0.0 4 Ahau 13 Mol.! 
Text, (a) photograph: Maudslay 1889-1902, vol. 1, plate 100. 
(b) drawing: ibid., plate 100, A, B, and c. 
Gordon, 1896, figure 6. 
References: Bowditch, 1910, pp. 100, 101, 135, 196, and table 31. 
Gordon, 1896, pp. 36, 37. 
Gordon, 1902, pp. 174-176. 
Maudslay, 1889-1902, vol. 1 of text, p. 66. 
Spinden, 1913, p. 159, and table 1. 
Stela 1 is broken into two pieces. The upper and larger part lies on the 
ground, the base being im situ on the second step of the stairway ascending 
the western slope of Mound 9. Underneath the base of this stela was a 
cruciform chamber like those under Stele 7,1, M, and C. This was opened by 
the Fourth Peabody Museum Expedition in 1895, and was found to con- 
tain “five rude earthenware vessels, fragments of stalactites, shells of the 
Spondylus calcifer, a large jadeite bead, and a quantity of cinnabar,” all 

1 For other monuments recording this same hotun-ending, see Appendix VIII. 
