242 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
For the most part these glyphs are clear and require no comment. 
The bar in both the cycle and katun coefficients has an interior decoration, 
thus, (==); and care should be taken not to mistake it for two bars 
instead of one. The uinal coefficient is either 1, 2, or 3, with by far the best 
reading at 3. The kin coefficient looks like 0, and as the day-sign is clearly 
Ahau, it can be nothing else. Even assuming that the uinal coefficient were 
either 1 or 2, this date can only be 20 or 40 days earlier at the outside. Our 
preliminary inspection of the Initial Series number, therefore, limits us to 
three possible readings, the extremes within 40 days of each other: 
9.5519.1.0, 7 Aha 4.U0 
9.5.19.2.0 1 Ahau 3 Zip 
9.5-19.3.0 8 Ahau 3 Zotz 
An inspection of the terminal date in bd, 1b, however, at once clears up 
all uncertainty as to the date recorded, and eliminates the first two, leaving 
the third as the only reading possible here. 
The day is clearly 8 Ahau, and although the month in 1) immediately 
following Glyph A of the Supplementary Series in 1a (not shown in plate 26, d) 
is partially effaced, enough remains to show that it is 3 Zotz, and that this 
Initial Series therefore can only be 9.5.19.3.0 8 Ahau 3 Zotz. 
Gordon, through a misidentification of the uinal coefficient as 12 instead 
of 3, and of the month as Mac instead of Zotz, reaches a date g uinals later, 
namely, 9.5.19.12.0 6 Ahau 3 Mac. Even admitting that the head in 1b 
looks as much like Mac as Zotz, which it does not, the uinal coefficient can 
not be 12, as it is clearly 1, 2, or 3. Gordon reads it as 12 only by following 
an error of Goodman, who assigns the value 10 to the element above the 
month-sign: (of 1. This element, however, is clearly non-numerical, 
as can be proved in a number of instances.’ Indeed, the very passage from 
which Goodman derived his value of 10 for it, has an entirely different and 
demonstrable meaning.* In short, it is quite certain that, whatever it may 
mean, it in no way affects the numerical value of the coefficients of the glyphs 
in which it appears, and consequently cd here is 3 and not 13 uinals. 
Without attempting to explain at this point why such a very early date 
as 9.5.19.3.0 should be recorded on such a late construction as the Hiero- 
glyphic Stairway, let us pass to the consideration of the other dates of this 
text, reserving explanation of its probable meaning until all the evidence 
has been presented. 

1 Goodman, 1897, p. 130. 
2 An identical case is found in the Initial Series on Stela 11 at Yaxchilan. In a3 of this inscription, where 
the tuns of the Initial Series are recorded, this same element stands between the period-glyph and its coeflicient of 1: 
The context here clearly proves that the tun coefficient is I and not 11, as it would have to be if 
Goodman’s decipherment of this element were correct. ‘This element also appears at D3 in the same 
text between the month-sign (Tzec) and its coefhicient (8), without, however, changing the numerical 
value of the latter to 18, also proved by the accompanying calculations. 

3 See Stela C, p. 350, where it will be found that the date which has this element is 5 Ahau 8 Cumhu, probably 
9.17.2.0.0 5 Ahau 8 Cumhu, and therefore, if Goodman were correct in his decipherment of this element as 10, 
the day here would be 15 Ahau, clearly an impossible value. 
