INSCRIPTIONS OF THE GREAT PERIOD. 251 
perfectly justified in filling in the latter as 9. Gordon incorrectly shows two 
whole glyph-blocks missing between the Initial Series introducing glyph and 
the cycle-sign (Gordon, 1902, plate 5, ps and p9); but he calls attention to 
this error in the text, and states (as here) that no complete glyph-block is 
missing, only the right half of K and the left half of L.1. The katun coefficient, 
Md, is surely 15 and the tun coefficient, Md, is equally clear as 12. The uinal 
and kin coefficients, Na and Nd, respectively, are both 10. The day of the 
Initial Series terminal date is recorded at oa and is 10 Oc, and the month at 
ra and is 3 Cumhu.” (See figure 38,f/.) Collecting these values, the Initial 
Series here recorded will be found to be 9.15.12.10.10 10 Oc 3 Cumhu, as 
follows: 
Step P, K _ Initial Series introducing glyph 
L 9 cycles 
Ma 15 katuns 
Mb 12 tuns 
Na 10 uinals 
Nb to kins 
oa 100c 
Ra 3 Cumhu 
Gordon, in deciphering this date, makes several errors that lead him to a 
series of five possible readings, the extremes of which are over 325,000 years 
apart,’ and the nearest over 41,000 years later than Stele M and N, or in 
fact than the latest known monument anywhere. 
These truly colossal time conceptions may well have been entertained 
in the abstract by the Maya priests, as Gordon points out, and indeed as the 
writer himself believes; but that even the nearest of his readings is the 
correct value of Date 11 1s practically impossible. His conclusions rest on a 
series of misidentifications, as follows: His first error is in supposing that the 
month 13 Pop (a, Step Q) is part of the terminal date of the Initial Series on 
Step P above, and further, that the coefficient of the day reached by this 
Initial Series is 11 instead of 10, as actually recorded. Having made this 
initial mistake, he is obliged to go over 41,000 years forward in the Maya 
chronological system before he can find the nearest date fulfilling all the 
conditions he himself has imposed. 
The date actually recorded here has already been set forth. The day 
of the Initial Series is 10 Oc not 11 Oc and the corresponding month is 3 
Cumhu (ra, Step P) and not 13 Pop (a, Step Q). The latter is part of Date 
12, namely, 12 Oc 13 Pop, from which a Secondary Series of 6.5.10 in L, Step 
R, is counted. 
By reading this Secondary Series in two different ways, first as 6.10.5 and 
second as 6.5.10, Gordon reaches two different dates 12 Men 8 Pop and 6 
Ahau 13 Tzec, neither of which, however, 1s found in the text. The first he 



1 Gordon, 1902, p. 178. 
2 This block of stone, having the right edge of 0, all of p, Q, R, and the left edge of s,is Altar A’ (see p. 68) of 
the Early Period. 
3 Gordon, 1902, pp. 178-181. 
4 Morley, 1915, pp. 107-127. 
