284 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
to be counted backward from the Initial Series terminal date 9.16.10.0.0 
1 Ahau 3 Zip to reach the date 1 Ahau 8 Chen in Bi6-817, declared further 
by B13 to be at the end of a Katun 17. And in support of his reading it 
must be admitted that if 19.10.0.0 is counted backward from 9.16.10.0.0 
1 Ahau 3 Zip, a Katun 17 ending on the date 1 Ahau 8 Chen will be reached, 
VIZ: 
9.16.10.0.0 1 Ahau 3 Zip 
19.10.0.0 
8.17. 0.0.0 1 Ahau 8 Chen 
Bowditch apparently follows Goodman here, though admitting at the 
same time that the unexplained error in the month coefficient and the 
presence of a glyph denoting 14 cycles’ cause great uncertainty as to the 
meaning of this text.” 
Goodman’s interpretation is open to several vital objections: 
1. To begin with, it leaves utterly unexplained glyph B14, which, so far as its 
position is concerned, follows immediately after B13 and before B15 without any 
break, and has every appearance of being a part of the same number as B13 and B15. 
2. It requires that B13 be identified as 17 katuns, whereas the hand on the 
lower part of the face almost certainly indicates that it is 17 cycles instead. More- 
over, the sign denoting katuns in B12, according to his own reading, is quite dis- 
similar to B13. If one is the katun-sign, the other, in all probability, is not. 
3. It requires, moreover, a peculiarly un-Maya arrangement of the text, one 
indeed of which they could hardly have been capable. According to his reading, 
first comes a Secondary Series of 19.10.0.0; then a period-ending, Katun 17, without 
any accompanying ending-sign, however; next a glyph with a coefficient of 14, 
which he leaves unexplained altogether; and finally (one glyph intervening), the 
date 1 Ahau 8 Chen (the month-sign being very doubtful) ending what he believes 
to be Katun 17 of Cycle 8 in B13. 
Such an interpretation does too much violence tothe original text, since, 
so far as we can judge by inspection, there is no visible reason why B13 and 
B14 are not a continuation of the same number whose lower terms are 
expressed by Bio-B12. Therefore, in spite of the fact that Goodman’s 
reading develops the rather surprising coincidence that Katun 17 of Cycle 8 
is just 19.10.0.0 prior to 9.16.10.0.0 1 Ahau 3 Zip, and that it ended on the 
date 1 Ahau 8 Chen, possibly the best reading of B16, B17, it has been rejected 
as not only at variance with the glyphs actually recorded, but as generally 
incompatible with Maya practice. Moreover, the record of the day 1 Ahau 
in B16 may well be, and probably is, simply a repetition of the day of the 
Initial Series terminal date (1 Ahau 3 Zip) to show that this date was also 
the terminal date of the above Secondary Series. And finally, the 8 Chen in 
B17 may not be a month at all, as the sign identified as Chen may possibly 
be the Cauac variant of the tun-sign. 
This whole question has been thoroughly presented elsewhere (1915, pp. 
114-127), and the reader is referred to this passage for further information 


1 This glyph, as shown by the writer (1915, p. 117), could not in any case be 14 cycles. It is probably 14 great- 
cycles, as we have already seen. 
2 Bowditch, 1910, p. 186. 
