as an elaborate system of silent letters used as grammatical
determinatives.) And then Egyptian writing finally has pure alphabetic
elements.

As to Maya, I think it far more than likely that, when at last
deciphered, it will be found to contain most if not all of these
classes--_mutatis mutandis_. There seems every evidence that it is made
up of pictures with probably both concrete and abstract meanings;
word-conventions; and grammatical particles. It is at least probable
that there are also silent determinatives and not unlikely that there is
also a pure phonetic or alphabetic element. That the latter element is
not the basic one may I think be now regarded as established.

FOOTNOTES:

[35-*] The Tibetan use of symbolical words in place of numerals is worth
noting here, even though we do not know the Maya face numerals well
enough as yet for any comparison. See Csoma de K["o]ros, _Tibetan
grammar_, Calcutta, 1824, pp. 155 _et seq._; also Ph. Ed. Foucaux,
_Grammaire Tibetaine_, Paris, 1858, pp. 157 _et seq._

[39-*] "These [the Maya glyphs] do not represent a real script, as is so
often maintained, but are only pictures which have been reduced to the
appearance of letters, contracted to a narrow space, made
cursive."!--Dr. Eduard Seler, _Codex Vaticanus No. 3773_, page
65.--Well?

CONCLUSION

_Introite, nam et hic dii sunt._

It is not my desire to add, as a conclusion to a comment bearing on the
restoration and interpretation of Mayan hieroglyphic texts, any general
discussion of the data which tradition and the early Spanish writers
have left us of the mythology, rites and customs of the American races;
and still less to run out a line of attractive analogies between
isolated instances of their words, symbols or works, with those of any
of the various nations of the other hemisphere; nor to build up any
theory of descent or intercourse with any of these latter as today known
to history. The subject before us is on its very face too vast; the
written and traditional data are entirely too scanty and too little
understood; and while we are still obliged to designate the various gods
and personages of the Codices as god A, B, etc., and are unable to fix
definitely[41-*] a single inscribed date in terms of our chronology, or
tell the event attached to it, fancied comparisons amount to little. And
the favorite "linguistic" method is more fragile yet, especially when
the uncertainties of spelling and tran