240 ‘ THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN, 
glyphic Stairway, and this would therefore seem to be the one referred to as 
“recent”? by Scherzer’s informant in 1854.! That this landslide had taken 
place at least 50 years earlier, however, seems probable in view of the fact 
that neither Galindo nor Stephens mentions it at all, an omission which 
neither would scarcely have made had the stairway been destroyed only a few 
years before his visit. On the other hand, had the stairway been intact 
in 1689, Fuentes y Guzman would scarcely have failed to describe it, unless 
indeed his whole fanciful account of the ruins is second-hand, and he never 
saw them himself, which the writer believes. 
Let us next examine the nature of this landslide and ascertain the extent 
of the damage which it occasioned. As already explained, the excavations 
of the Fourth Peabody Museum Expedi- 
e 
tion proved that only the bottom 15 steps . d b WS 
. . . . J S > 
were in situ. When the digging was com- r SV 
. c Ss 
menced in 1892 there were parts of 15 con- is SS SS 
secutive steps on the slope of Mound 26, 5 SSS 
; : fs S 
and it was assumed that these were in ie Sse 
. . ee y re ~~ 
their original positions. (See plate 25, a, a Ss" 
: é SS 
Fic. 37.—Cross-section east and west through the - S 
Hieroglyphic Stairway of mound 26: ad, slope y “i SS 
of ground on western side of mound in 1892; cd, ama Ss 
original position of the Hieroglyphic Stairway; ty S 
ce, 15 bottom steps still in situ; fg, 15 steps found SESS SS 
on surface and in sequence, but not im situ in fiat S WS 
1892; xy, original position of steps fg. aa ara, SS 
3. SSS SS 
SS 
SVs 
S 
RSS and figure 37, fg.) Owens, then 
SG in charge of the work, began 
8 excavating to uncover the lower 
WN SS | end of this stairway, but found 
RS instead that the steps stopped 
RSS" abruptly some distance from 
NSS Puy 
f SKA the bottom of the slope (figure 37, f). At 
this point came his illness and death, and 
(2 oe the excavation of the stairway was not 
adSS RGKR—? resumed by Gordon until 1895. Diggin 
geing 
down where the steps fg came to an end, 
the latter finally reached the altar and the 15 steps in situ at the base of 
the mound (see plate 25, b, and figure 37, ce), and it then became apparent 
that the steps fg, which had at first been taken for the original stairway, 
were not im situ at all, but had slipped down from some higher position. 
What had happened appears very clearly in the east-and-west cross-section 
of Mound 26, through the Hieroglyphic Stairway, shown in figure 37. The 

‘Gordon (1902, pp. 153, 154) mentions a landslide on the north side of Mound 26 which scooped out almost 
the whole of this side, the débris being piled at the bottom of the slope. This side seems to have had only a ter- 
raced treatment, and its partial destruction could hardly have “much injured the effect of the ruins.” Cer- 
tainly the destruction of the Hieroglyphic Stairway did far more damage. 
