356 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
Stela 4 is broken off just above the feet. The upper part in falling 
broke into two large fragments. The lower part of the stela is in situ, 
and underneath it Altar Y was found (pp. 66, 208, 209), and under Altar Y 
a crudely executed statue of a human figure, said by Spinden to be one of the 
two most archaic sculptures in stone yet found at Copan. (See figure 67, d, 
and pp. 421, 422.) This monument, the most beautiful of all the Copan stele, 
has been prostrate for at least 80 years, since Stephens, who calls it Statue M, 
describes it as fallen and lying on its back in his time.? 
Again, we have exactly the same arrangement of the single figure and 
the inscription as on Stele H and F. The front or east face is carved with 
a human figure of heroic size whose head-dress and feather drapery extend 
around and completely cover the two adjacent sides, and the back has a 
vertical panel of two columns of glyph-blocks, 10 in each, or 20 for the entire 
text. This panel is surrounded by a mass of feather pendants and rosettes, 
of exactly the same type as those on Stela M and very similar to those on 
Stele H and F, and, on the basis of this arrangement, it may be assigned to 
the same class as the last two stele, H and F, namely, Class 6. 
This inscription has one feature which is duplicated in only two other 
texts in the entire body of the Maya inscriptions, Altar I’, also here at Copan,? 
and Stela 10 at Tikal, namely, in having its Initial Series introducing glyph 
in a position other than that at the beginning. ‘The text begins with a head- 
variant glyph in ai, the second position, B1, being the Initial Series introduc- 
ing glyph above mentioned. ‘This condition, barring the two exceptions 
noted, is without parallel in the Maya writing. The Initial Series were 
originally so named because, when present, they were always found to stand 
at the beginning of an inscription, and at no other position. Indeed, the 
Initial Series introducing glyphs on the above.three monuments are the only 
known exceptions to this rule. This glyph on Stela 4, with the exception of 
its position, however, is perfectly regular, all the customary elements being 
present in well-known forms. 
The next glyph, A2a, records the cycles of an Initial Series, and the next, 
A2b, the katuns. ‘The cycle coefficient is destroyed, but we are doubtless 
justified in assuming it to have beeng. ‘The katun coefficient is very clearly 
8.2 The next glyph-block, B2, is entirely destroyed, and since the first half 
of the next block preserved, a3a, is 10 Ahau, the missing B2 must have 
recorded the tuns, uinals, and kins of this Initial Series. The next three 
glyph-blocks, B3—Bs, are destroyed, which is particularly unfortunate, as one 
of them must have recorded the month corresponding to “to Ahau”’ in a3a. 

1 Stephens, 1841, vol. 1, p. 157. On the legend to his map facing p. 133, Stela 4, called Statue M, is in- 
correctly described as “erect.” He gives its true condition in the text, however, showing that it was fallen and 
shattered in his time. 
? As already explained, pp. 190, 192, the displacement of the Initial Series introducing glyph on Altar I’ was 
due to the desire to have it preceded by a Secondary Series which would connect its Initial Series with the Initial 
Series on the sister monument, Altar H’. No such an obvious explanation can be advanced to account for its dis- 
placement here, however. 
8 These two glyphs have disappeared since Maudslay’s photograph of Stela 4 was taken in 1895. His 
picture shows, however, that even then they were on a thin flake, partially cracked from the larger fragment 
on which they were inscribed. 
