398 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
working-drawings for the sculptors, whose business it was to transfer these 
data and designs to the monuments themselves. 
All these labors consumed much time, and it thus became necessary 
to select, in advance of the time of actual dedication, the exact date upon 
which the ceremony itself was to be celebrated, 1.¢., the date upon which the 
monument was to be formally put into use, dedicated; in short, its con- 
temporaneous date. And so the writer believes the ends, first of the katuns 
next of the lahuntuns, and finally of the hotuns, were chosen for this purpose. 
That the katun-endings were chosen first rests upon the purely hypo- 
thetical ground that the katun would appear to be the best fitted period of 
the Maya chronological system available for this purpose. The tun was too 
short; it would have made the dates for the erection of stela come around 
too frequently. The katun, the next higher period in their system of numer- 
ation, however, came to an end only once every 20 years, and, in the very 
beginning at least, this would have been often enough for the struggling 
young cities to have undertaken such an ambitious project. 
On the other hand, the archeological evidence at Copan seems to indicate 
that the half-katuns, the lahuntuns, were the periods at first selected for this 
purpose. The three earliest surely deciphered monuments at Copan, Stele 24, 
15, and 9, all record lahuntun-endings, 9.2.10.0.0, 9.4.10.0.0, and 9.6.10.0.0 
respectively, and the earliest on stylistic grounds, Stela 20, probably does 
also, 9.1.10.0.0. In fact, the earliest surely deciphered katun-ending does 
not occur until 9.9.0.0.0, or 128 years after the first lahuntun-ending, 
unless the reading suggested for Stela 9 at Tikal, 9.2.0.0.0, be accepted as 
correct. Nevertheless, the writer is inclined to believe that the katun- 
endings were first used for this purpose, and that at first it was the custom 
to erect monuments only at the end of every 20-year period, and not until 
later, when the Maya had grown more powerful, 7. ¢., after they had reached 
Copan for example, were the 10-year periods also similarly commemorated. 
Thus, on the evidence furnished by Stele 20, 24, 15, and 9 above, it 
appears probable that by the time the Maya founded Copan they were able 
to erect stele at 10-year intervals, in which case the stele commemorating 
the earlier katun-endings, 9.2.0.0.0, 9.3.0.0.0, 9.4.0.0.0, and 9.5.0.0.0 either 
still lie buried somewhere in the valley or they have been destroyed, or even 
more probable, all the early katun-endings may not have been thus marked, 
and stele recording some of these dates may never have been erected. 
The earliest certain first or third hotun-marker known is Stela 25 at 
Piedras Negras in 9.8.15.0.0, ten years earlier than the earliest now known 
at Copan, 7.¢., Stela E in 9.9.5.0.0; but from this time onward the practice of 
marking the expiration of the five-year periods became the general rule and 
persisted down almost to the end of the Old Empire, except at the smaller 
cities, where sometimes the lahuntun-endings were used instead. (See Ap- 
pendix VII for further discussion of this practice.) 
It was stated in Chapter I, page 46, that the record of the Initial, 
Supplementary, and Secondary Series and Period Ending and Calendar 
