No one can read the characters on the tablets of Palenque and the stone
figures at Copan. Similar characters occur at other ruins. At Tikal some
were cut upon beautiful wooden panels. They were carved on greenstone
ornaments, scratched upon shells, and painted upon pottery, There were
plenty of books among the Mayas, Some of these still exist, and four have
been quite carefully studied. They contain many quaint pictures of
priests, gods, worshipers, etc. They also contain many numbers and day
names. There are also in them many of the same strange hieroglyphs,
already mentioned. These are called “calculiform” or “pebble-shaped”
characters, because they present a generally roundish outline, as of a
pebble cut through. It is plain that they were at first simply pictures.
Some of them, no doubt, are still simple pictures of ideas; others convey
ideas different from those at first pictured; many can no longer be seen
to be pictures at all; some, perhaps, represent sounds, and are not now
pictures for ideas. It is possible, in a general way, to make out
something of the sense of parts of Mayan books and inscriptions, but it is
quite likely that they will never be exactly read as we read our own
written books.