INSCRIPTIONS OF THE GREAT PERIOD. 281 
the same sculptor; that this particular variant for Zip may be due to the 
personal equation of a single individual. The. form of Glyph A of the 
Supplementary Series used here is also unusual, being found in only 
two other texts, so far as the writer knows.! There are no other 
decipherable glyphs on the eastern side. 
The western side of Stela N has one of the most remarkable Second- 
ary Series known, consisting of six orders of periods: great-cycles, cycles, 
katuns, tuns, uinals, and kins, covering a range of over a hundred thousand 
years. Indeed, there are only two other monuments known—-Stela 10 at 
Tikal and the tablet from the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque— 
which show numbers involving the use of six or more orders of time-periods.? 
These three numbers have such an important bearing on the question of how 
many cycles make a great-cycle in the inscriptions that the writer has 
treated them at considerable length elsewhere,’ and all that need be repeated 
here is the general conclusion reached there, namely, that, as in the case of 
all other Maya time-periods except the uinal,* it took twenty of one order to 




1Stela A here at Copan and Slab 6 of the Hieroglyphic Stairway at Naranjo. Attention has already been 
called to this irregularity on the former, p. 223, although no reason to account for it can be advanced. A repro- 
duction of the other text will be found in Maler, 1908a, plate 27, Ata. 
2 A fourth possible occurrence in the inscriptions of a number composed of more than five periods is on a 
tablet formerly in the possession of Don Secundino Orantes in the city of Chiapa, 66 cm. high and 43 cm. wide 
figured by Brinton (1895, fig. 82, and pp. 138, 139). The front of this shows the head and torso of a human figure 
in profile, facing a column of seven glyphs, all of which are destroyed save the coefficients of the first two, 9 and 12 
respectively. Could the two latter have been 9 cycles and 12 katuns of an Initial Series number? The back opens 
with a Secondary Series introducing glyph at at and apparently a Secondary Series of seven periods in B1-Aq as 
follows: 13.13.13.1.1.11.14, and the terminal date, 6 Chuen 9 Muan (?) in as, B5. There is another Secondary 
Series introducing glyph at c2, another Secondary Series number of 1.19 (?).1§ at D2, c3 and another terminal date, 
5? 10 Xul, at c3, 03. Unfortunately the drawing published by Brinton is very poor, as for example ,showing a 
uinal coefficient of 19 in D2, almost certa.nly an error, and it is impossible to connect either of these dates with 
either of the numbers recorded. The original seems to have disappeared. The drawing published by Brinton is 
in the Saville library at the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York City. 
3 This question of the exact length of the time-period next higher than the cycle, usually called the great-cycle, 
has been much discussed, and is indeed of such major import2nce that the writer has devoted a considerable sec- 
tion of his Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphics (Morley, 1915, pp. 107-127) to its presentation. 
So far as the picture-writing manuscripts are concerned, the codices, there is no room for doubt that 20 cycles were 
required to make one great-cycle. Fo6rstemann (1906, pp. 228-233, 261-264), in his discussion of the serpent 
numbers on pp. 61, 62, 69 of the Dresden Codex, each of which is composed of six orders of time-periods, proved 
that the calculations there presented require 20 cycles to a great-cycle. His argument is so convincing, and is 
supported by the figures in the manuscript so remarkably, that in so far as the Dresden Codex is concerned the 
point has long since been generally admitted. In the inscriptions on the monuments, however, all the earlier 
writers (excepc Thomas), including Goodman, Bowditch, and Seier, have held that only 13 cycles were required 
to make one great cycle. Bowditch (1910, Appendix IX, pp. 319-321) marshals the facts in support of this view, 
to which he himself inclines, most clearly, and students are referred to his work for further information concerning 
this hypothesis. The writer, on the contrary, strongly disagrees with this view, and in the passage already cited 
(pp. 110-114) sets forth what he believes to be the true explanation of the apparently contradictory 
facts. The error seems to have arisen through mistaking the name of a cycle for its position in the great-cycle. 
There can be no doubt that the names of the cycles ran from I to 13 inclusive, a cycle 1 following immediately 
after a cycle 13. A parallel is seen in the sequence of the day coefficients, which run from 1 to 13 inclusive and 
then back to 1 again. Another parallel is afforded by the sequence of the names of the katunsin the u kahlay katunob, 
Had there been only 13 cycles in a great-cycle, moreover, the coefficient 13 never could have occurred with the 
cycle-glyph, since 13 cycles would have been recorded as 1 great-cycle instead. But several passages exist which 
show the cycle-s:gn with a coefficient above 13 but under 20. B13 on Stela N here at Copan and j11 on the west panel 
of the tablet from the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque, for example. A review of all the evidence, the writer 
believes, leads inevitably to the conclusion that there was no irregularity in the sixth term of the Maya numerical 
system, and that, like the fifth, fourth, and second, and also the seventh and the eighth, it also was composed of 20 
units of the order next lower. 
4The only place where the Maya vigesimal system of numeration breaks down is in the third place—the 
tuns—where 18 instead of 20 units of the second place are required to make one of the third. As explained else- 
where (Morley, 1915, pp. 62, 63), this was probably due to the desire to make the third term conform to the length 
of the solar year as nearly as possible. 
