Maya

Now turn to a map: Suppose the ships of Atlantis to have reached the shores of Syria, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, where dwelt a people who, as we have seen, used the Central American Maya alphabet; the Atlantis ships are then but two hundred miles distant from Armenia.

(Valentini's "Mexican Calendar Stone," art. Maya Archæology, p.

[Transcribers note: the argument in this section heavily depends on the Bishop Landa Maya alphabet, which has now been discredited.

This is the same Maia whom the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg identifies with the Maya of Central America.

This is in the alphabet of the Mayas, the ancient people of the peninsula of Yucatan, who claim that their civilization came to them across the sea in ships from the east, that is, from the direction of Atlantis.

The Mayas succeeded to the Colhuas, whose era terminated one thousand years before the time of Christ; from them they received their alphabet.

It has come to us through Bishop Landa, one of the early missionary bishops, who confesses to having burnt a great number of Maya books because they contained nothing but the works of the devil.

He wrote a history of the Mayas and their country, which was preserved in manuscript at Madrid in the library of the Royal Academy of History.

It contains a description and explanation of the phonetic alphabet of the Mayas.

When we observe, in the table of alphabets of different European nations which I give herewith, how greatly the forms of the Phœnician letters have been modified, it would surprise us to find any resemblance between the Maya alphabet of two or three centuries since and the ancient European forms.

It must, however, be remembered that the Mayas are one of the most conservative peoples in the world.

But when we consider the vast extent of time which has elapsed, and the fact that we are probably without the intermediate stages of the alphabet which preceded the archaic Phœnician, it will be astonishing if we find resemblances between any of the Maya letters and the European forms, even though we concede that they are related.

When the emblems--which were probably first intended for religious inscriptions, where they could be slowly and carefully elaborated--were placed in the hands of a busy, active, commercial people, such as were the Atlanteans, and afterward the Phœnicians, men with whom time was valuable, the natural tendency would be to simplify and condense them; and when the original meaning of the picture was lost, they would naturally slur it, as we find in the letters pp and x of the Maya alphabet, where the figure of the human face remains only in rude lines.

letter H of the Maya alphabet represented by this figure, ; now, as it takes less time to make a single stroke than a double one, this would become in time .

We turn now to the archaic Greek and the old Hebrew, and we find the letter h indicated by this sign, , precisely the Maya letter h simplified.

Hence the Maya sign becomes in the archaic Phœnician this, .

In some of the Phœnician alphabets we even find the letter h made with the double strokes above and below, as in the Maya h.

That the Atlanteans, or Mayas, when they sought to simplify their letters and combine them with others, took from the centre of the ornate hieroglyphical figure some characteristic mark with which they represented the whole figure.

Clearly from the Mayas.

There are two figures for o in the Maya alphabet; they are

[paragraph continues] and ; now, if we apply the rule which we have seen to exist in the case of the Maya m to these figures, the essential characteristic found in each is the circle, in the first case pendant from the hieroglyph; in the other, in the centre of the lower part of it.

We find the precise Maya o a circle in a circle, or a dot within a circle, repeated in the Phœnician forms for o, thus,  and , and by exactly the same forms in the Egyptian hieroglyphics; in the Runic we have the circle in the circle; in one form of the Greek o the dot was placed along-side of the circle instead of below it, as in the Maya.

The letter n of the Maya alphabet is represented by this sign, itself probably a simplification of some more ornate form, .

We find in the archaic Ethiopian, a language as old as the Egyptian, and which represents the Cushite branch of the Atlantean stock, the sign for n (na) is ; in archaic Phœnician it comes still closer to the S shape, thus, , or in this form, ; we have but to curve these angles to approximate it very closely to the Maya n; in Troy this form was found, .

The Maya sign for k is .

Following the precedent established for us by the Mayas in the case of the letter m, let us see what is the distinguishing feature here; it is clearly the figure of a serpent standing erect, with its tail doubled around its middle, forming a circle.

We turn again to the valley of the Nile, and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for k was a serpent with a convolution or protuberance in the middle, precisely as in the Maya, thus, ; this was transformed into the Egyptian letter ; the serpent and the protuberance reappear in one of the Phœnician forms of k, to wit, ; while in the Punic we have these forms,  and .

So that the two lines projecting from the upright stroke of our English K are a reminiscence of the convolution of the serpent in the Maya original and the Egyptian copy.

Turn now to the Maya sign for t: it is .

[paragraph continues]Maya sign the cross is united at the bottom, like a figure 8.

We even find the curved lines of the Maya t which give it something of the appearance of the numeral 8, repeated accurately in the Mediterranean alphabets; thus the Punic t repeats the Maya form almost exactly as  and .

In the Maya there are three forms given for this letter.

Turn next to the Maya sign for q (ku): it is .

The circle below is not significant, for there are many circular figures in the Maya alphabet.

[paragraph continues]; we turn to the Ethiopian q (khua), and we find it , as qua, ; while the Phœnician comes still nearer the supposed Maya form in ; the Moab stone was ; the Himyaritic Arabian form became ; the Greek form was , which graduated into the Roman Q.

But a still more striking proof of the descent of the Phœnician alphabet from the Maya is found in the other form of the q, the Maya cu, which is .

Now, if we apply the Maya rule to this, and discard the outside circle, we have this left, .

The letter c or g (for the two probably gave the same sound as in the Phœnician) is given in the Maya alphabet as follows, .

In the Maya we have one sign for p, and another for pp.

The first contains a curious figure, precisely like our r laid on its back , There is, apparently, no r in the Maya alphabet; and the Roman r grew out of the later Phœnician r formed thus, ; it would appear that the earliest Phœnician alphabet did not contain the letter r.

Is it not another remarkable coincidence that the p, in both Maya and Phœnician, should contain this singular sign?

The form of pp in the Maya alphabet is this, .

The letter l in the Maya is in two forms; one of these is , the other is .

The Maya letter b is shaped thus, .

Now, if we turn to the Phœnician, we find that b is represented by the same crescent-like figure which we find in the middle of this hieroglyph, but reversed in the direction of the writing, thus, ; while in the archaic Hebrew we have the same crescent figure as in the Maya, turned in the same direction, but accompanied by a line drawn downward, and to the left, thus, ; a similar form is also found in the Phœnician , and this in the earliest Greek changed into , and in the later Greek into Β.

The Maya e is ; this became in time ; then  (we see this form on the Maya monuments); the dots in time were indicated by strokes, and we reach the hieratic Egyptian form, : we even find in some of the ancient Phœnician inscriptions the original Maya circles preserved in making the letter e, thus, ; then we find the old Greek form, ; the old Hebrew, ; and the later Phœnician, : when the direction of the writing was changed this became .

The Maya i is ; this became in time ; this developed into a still simpler form, ; and this passed into the Phœnician form, .

We have seen the complicated symbol for m reduced by the Mayas themselves into this figure, : if we attempt to write this rapidly, we find it very difficult to always keep the base lines horizontal; naturally we form something like this, : the distinctive figure within the sign for m in the Maya is ‏ו ?X‎ or .

The , x, of the Maya alphabet is a hand pointing downward , this, reduced to its elements, would be expressed some thing like this,  or ; and this is very much like the x of the archaic Phœnician, ; or the Moab stone, ; or the later Phœnician  or the Hebrew , , or the old Greek, : the later Greek form was Ξ.

The Maya alphabet contains no sign for the letter s; there is, however, a symbol called ca immediately above the letter k; it is probable that the sign ca stands for the soft sound of c, as, in our words citron, circle, civil, circus, etc.

As it is written in the Maya alphabet ca, and not k, it evidently represents a different sound.

If now we turn to the s sound, indicated by the Maya sign ca, , we find the resemblance still more striking to kindred European letters.

We have thus traced back the forms of eighteen of the ancient letters to the Maya alphabet.

Maya, ; old Greek, ; old Hebrew, ; Phœnician, .

Maya, o; old Greek, o; old Hebrew, o; Phœnician, o.

Maya, ; old Greek, ; old Phœnician,  and .

Maya, ; old Phœnician,  and ; Greek, .

Maya, ; Egyptian, ; Ethiopian, ; Phœnician, .

Maya, ; Egyptian, ; Pelasgian , Arcadian, ; Phœnician, .

But we find another singular proof of the truth of this theory: It will be seen that the Maya alphabet lacks the letter d and the letter r.

The sounds d and t were probably indicated in the Maya tongue by the same sign, called t in the Landa alphabet.

It would, therefore, appear that after the Maya alphabet passed to the Phœnicians they added two new signs for the letters d and r; and it is a singular fact that their poverty of invention seems to have been such that they used to express both d and r, the same sign, with very little modification, which they had already obtained from the Maya alphabet as the symbol for b.

[paragraph continues]Maya, were supplied by imitating the Maya sign for b; and it is a curious fact that while the Phœnician legends claim that Taaut invented the art of writing, yet they tell us that Taaut made records, and "delivered them to his successors and to foreigners, of whom one was Isiris (Osiris, the Egyptian god), the inventor of the three letters." Did these three letters include the d and r, which they did not receive from the Atlantean alphabet, as represented to us by the Maya alphabet?

In the alphabetical table which we herewith append we have represented the sign V, or vau, or f, by the Maya sign for U.

154, an interesting article pointing out other resemblances between the Maya alphabet and the Egyptian.

It is astonishing to notice that while Landa's first B is, according to Valentini, represented by a footprint, and that path and footprint are pronounced Be in the Maya dictionary, the Egyptian sign for B was the human leg.

It would appear as if both the Phœnicians and Egyptians drew their alphabet from a common source, of which the Maya is a survival, but did not borrow from one another.

And yet I have shown that the closest resemblances exist between the Maya alphabet and the Egyptian signs--in the c, h, t, i, k, m, n, o, q, and s--eleven letters in all; in some cases, as in the n and k, the signs are identical; the k, in both alphabets, is not only a serpent, but a serpent with a protuberance or convolution in the middle!

If we add to the above the b and u, referred to in the "Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society," we have thirteen letters out of sixteen in the Maya and Egyptian related to each other.

It is probable that a full study of the Central American monuments may throw stronger light upon the connection between the Maya and the European alphabets, and that further discoveries of inscriptions in Europe may approximate the alphabets of the New and Old World still more closely by supplying intermediate forms.

Although it has so far been found difficult, if not impossible, to translate the compound words formed from the Maya alphabet, yet we can go far enough to see that they used the system of simpler sounds for the whole hieroglyph to which we have referred.

Bishop Landa gives us, in addition to the alphabet, the signs which represent the days and months, and which are evidently compounds of the Maya letters.

see very plainly the letter ‏ו ?X‎ for m, the sign  for o; and we will possibly find the sign for l in the right angle to the right of the m sign, and which is derived from the figure in the second sign for l in the Maya alphabet.

One of the most ancient races of Central America is the Chiapenec, a branch of the Mayas.

Thus, while we find such extraordinary resemblances between the Maya alphabet and the Phœnician alphabet, we find equally surprising coincidences between the Chiapenec tongue, a branch of the Mayas, and the Hebrew, a branch of the Phœnician.

But here, in the Maya alphabet, we are not only able to extract from the heart of the hieroglyphic the typical sign for the sound, but we are able to go a step farther, and, by means of the inscriptions upon the monuments of Copan and Palenque, deduce the alphabetical hieroglyph itself from an older and more ornate figure; we thus not Only discover the relationship of the European alphabet to the American, but we trace its descent in the very mode in which reason tells us it must have been developed.

'We always see them as standard or parasol bearers, but never engaged in actual warfare.'" ("Maya Archæology," p.

We have seen the Pan and Maia of the Greeks reappearing in the Pan and Maya of the Mayas of Central America.