amay=corner.

Equipped with the foregoing knowledge of the sort of memorial it was
customary for the Mayas to erect, let us now see whether the ruins of
Copan furnish any monuments which would answer to the description and
purpose of "amay-tes" and "ka-tuns." Referring the reader to parts I-III
of Mr. A. P. Maudslay's work already cited, I draw special attention to
the following stelae and altars which are so admirably figured therein.

Stela F, which stands at the east side of the Great Plaza at Copan and
faces west, is in a particularly bad state of preservation. It exhibits a
standing figure on one side whose head is surmounted by an indescribable
combination of a mask, a seated figure and much elaborate feather-work. A
noteworthy feature, which recurs on other stelae in Copan and Quirigua, is
an appendage which appears like an artificial beard attached to the chin
of the personage. At the sides of the stela serpents' heads alternate with
diminutive grotesque figures. On the back, or east side of the stela, two
cords are represented which appear to have been brought over from the
front and which are tied together so as to form five open loops, in each
of which, as in a frame, there is a group consisting of four calculiform
glyphs. The cord, which is knotted together at the base of the stela,
appears to pass around it. It is impossible not to recognize that this
representation of twenty glyphs, as divided into five groups of four,
exactly agrees with Cogolludo's records that the Mayas employed 20-year
and 4-year eras and that when five of the 4-year periods had passed they
called it a ka-tun, and made a carved memorial of it. As Landa tells us
that they erected stelae to commemorate the 20-year period, the inference
to which the Copan Stela F leads us is that it is a katun and that the
twenty glyphs carved on it are year-signs. Examination, however, shows
that, whereas the Maya Calendar had but four year-signs which would
naturally be bound to repeat themselves in each group of four years, no
two glyphs on the Stela F are alike. It is obvious, therefore, that the
glyphs are not the four calendar year-signs and reflection shows, indeed,
that it would have been quite superfluous to carve these repeatedly on a
stela. As each year-sign was identified with a cardinal point and an
element and was permanently associated with a particular color, the mere
employment of the latter would suffice to convey this association of
id