INSCRIPTIONS OF THE GREAT PERIOD. 275 
the fallen steps, were from the facade of this temple rather than from the 
stairway proper. In the same vicinity he found fragments of several pairs 
of large claws “clearly representing those of some bird of the parrot family,”’ 
and doubtless many of the other striking sculptures found at the base of the 
stairway once embellished the facade of Temple 26, which must have been 
one of the most magnificent buildings in the city. 
Our interest in Temple 26 in the present connection centers in an in- 
scription which seems to have been inscribed upon its door-jambs. Gordon 
figures one block! of this, which he says was found near the summit of the 
mound, and which he believes may have formed part of a hieroglyphic 
frieze around the temple. He also figures four other stones from the same 
inscription which are described in his monograph as “Sculptures from the 
Hieroglyphic Stairway,’” ‘Twenty-one or twenty-two fragments of this 
text are now in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, Massachusetts; 
another piece is in the American Museum of Natural History at New York; 
and fifteen to twenty others are in the Museum of the Normal School at 
Tegucigalpa, Honduras. 
The provenance of the fragments in the Peabody Museum, as estab- 
lished by the entries in the museum accession book, is as follows: Nos. 
874 to 882, brought back by the Second Expedition, 1892-93, are from 
the eastern side of Mound 26, and Nos. 795 to 810, brought back by the 
Fourth Expedition, 1894-95, were excavated in the angle formed by the 
eastern slope of Mound 26 and the northern slope of Temple 22. Of these 
forty-three blocks in all three places, some five or six do not belong to this text. 
By referring to plate 6, it will be seen that the provenance of the two 
groups of fragments at the Peabody Museum 1s practically identical. Stones 
falling from the back wall of Temple 26, if they rolled far enough, would 
reach the angle between the substructures of Temples 26 and 22. 
What seems to have happened is this: The Second Expedition picked up 
the surface finds on the eastern slope of Mound 26, 1. ¢., Nos. 874 to 882, 
all those figured by Gordon, and later, when the angle between the sub- 
structures of Temples 26 and 22 was excavated, Nos. 795 to 810 came to 
light. 
The discovery of Nos. 874 to 882 on the eastern slope of Mound 26, and 
one of them, No. 875, from near the summit (Gordon, 1902, p. 19), proves 
that the remaining fragments Nos. 795 to 810 found buried below in the 
angle between Temples 22 and 26 originally came from ‘Temple 26 and not 
Temple 22. In plate 6 the original position of this inscription is shown as 
having been on the jambs of the west and east doorways of Temple 26, but 
owing to the total destruction of the temple, this position, though probable, 
is not certain. To begin with, the writer can not agree with Gordon that 
these blocks were originally part of a hieroglyphic frieze around the temple. 
In rors he fitted four of these stones together, and found that the inscription 


1 Gordon, 1902, plate 13, 1. This piece is now in the Peabody Museum, catalogue No. C. 875. 
2 Op. cit., plate 15. 
