قراءة كتاب Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884-85, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1888, pages 253-372

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Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices
Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884-85, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1888, pages 253-372

Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884-85, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1888, pages 253-372

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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divide each page by two horizontal lines into three parts, which the writer of manuscript B (pp. 46-74) rarely does. The more precise statement is as follows: In A, pp. 1-23 and 29-43 always show two such lines in red color; pp. 25-28 have no red lines, but clearly show a division into three parts; p. 24 is the only one of this manuscript that has only writing and no pictures and where the greater continuity of the written speech forbids tripartition (here ends one side of the manuscript); finally, p. 45 seems to be marked as the real end of the whole by the fact that it contains three very light lines, dividing it into four parts; moreover, everything on this page is more crowded, and the figures are smaller than on the preceding pages, just as in some modern books the last page is printed more closely or in smaller type for want of space. In the same manner I suspect that p. 1 is the real beginning of the manuscript. This is indicated by the bad condition of leaf 2 44, which has lost one corner and whose page 44 has lost its writing altogether. For, if in folding the codex leaf 1 45 was turned from within outward, somewhat against the rule, leaf 2 44 was the outer one, and p. 44 lay above or below, and was thus most exposed to injury. I will not omit mentioning that my attention has been called by Dr. Carl Schultz-Sellack, of Berlin, to the possibility of leaves 1 45 and 2 44 having been fastened to the rest in a reversed position, so that 43, 1 and 2 and on the other side 44, 45, 3 were adjoining; then the gods would here be grouped together, which follow each other also on pages 29 and 30. It cannot be denied that this supposition explains the bad condition of leaf 2 44 still better, because then it must have been the outermost of the manuscript; 44 would be the real title page, so to say, and on p. 45 the writer began, not ended, his representation, with the closer writing of which I have spoken, and only afterward passed on to a more splendid style; and this assumption tallies very well with some other facts. But all this can only be cleared up after further progress has been made in deciphering the manuscript.

“In two places, moreover, this first manuscript shows an extension of the drawings from one page over to the neighboring one, namely, from 4 to 5 and from 30 to 31. This is not found on the second manuscript. From continuity of contents, if we are allowed to assume it from similarity of pictures and partition, we may suppose this manuscript to be divided into chapters in the following manner: pp. 1-2 (then follows the unfinished and disconnected page 3), 4-17, 18-23 (here follows p. 24, without pictures), 25-28, 29-33, 34-35, 36-41.

“Compared with this, manuscript B rarely shows a tripartition, but on pp. 65-68 and 51-57 a bipartition by one line. A further difference is this, that A out of 45 pages has only one (p. 24) without pictures, while B out of 29 pages has 9 without pictures (51, 52, 59, 63, 64, 70, 71, 72, 73), nothing but writing being found on them. Page 74, differing from all others, forms the closing tableau of the whole; and, similarly, p. 60, the last of the front, shows a peculiar character. A closer connection of contents may be suspected between pp. 46-50, 53-58, 61-62, 65-68.

“The two manuscripts also differ greatly in the employment of the sign, or rather signs, differing little from each other, which resemble a representation of the human eye and consist of two curves, one opening above and the other below and joined at their right and left ends. These signs occur only on 5 out of the 45 pages of Codex A (1, 2, 24, 31, 43), while they occur on 16 pages out of the 29 of Codex B (48, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 70, 71, 72, 73).

“I believe that the differences above mentioned, to which others will probably be added, are sufficient to justify my hypothesis of the original independence of the two codices. Whoever looks over the whole series of leaves without preconception cannot escape the feeling, on passing from leaf 45 to leaf 46, that something different begins here.

“Thus the copy of Aglio has made it possible to venture a hypothesis bordering on certainty concerning the original form of this monument. Five years after Aglio had finished the copying there appeared, in 1831, the first volumes of Lord Kingsborough’s Mexican Antiquities. The work in the trade cost 175l.; the expense of publication had been over 30,000l. The eighth and ninth volumes followed only in 1848. The ponderous work has undoubtedly great value from its many illustrations of old monuments of Central American art and literature, which in great part had never been published. As regards the Spanish and English text, it is of much less value. We may pass in silence over the notes added by Lord Kingsborough himself, in which he tries to give support to his favorite hypothesis that the Jews were the first settlers of America. Whoever wishes to obtain exact information concerning the character and contents of the whole work and dreads the labor of lifting and opening the volumes, may find a comprehensive review of it in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 17, pp. 90-124, 8vo, London, January, 1832, where he will also find a lucid exposition of the history of the literature of Mexican antiquarian studies.

“In the middle of the third volume of the Mexican Antiquities (side numbers are here absent) there is found the title ‘Fac simile of an original Mexican painting preserved in the Royal Library at Dresden, 74 pages.’ These 74 pages are here arranged on 27 leaves in the following manner:

Codex A. Codex B.
1, 2, 3, 46, 47, 48,
4, 5, 6, 49, 50, 51,
7, 8, 9, 52, 53, 54,
10, 11, 55, 56, 57,
12, 13, 14, 58, 59, 60,
15, 16, 17, 61, 62, 63,
18, 19, 64, 65, 66,
20, 67, 68, 69,
21, 22, 23, 70, 71, 72,
24, 25, 73, 74.
26, 27, 28,  
29, 30, 31,  
32, 33, 34,  
35, 36, 37,  
38, 39, 40,  
41, 42, 43,  
44, 45.  

“On the whole, therefore, each leaf in Kingsborough comprises three pages of our manuscript. Why the publisher joined only two pages in the case of 10 and 11, 18 and 19, 24 and 25, and left page 20 entirely separate, I cannot say; but when he failed to add 46 to 44 and 45 it was due to the fact that here there is indication of a different manuscript.

“On January 27, 1832, Lord Kingsborough wrote a letter from Mitchellstown, near Cork, in Ireland, to Fr. Ad. Ebert, then head librarian at Dresden, thanking him again for the permission to have the manuscript copied and telling him that he had ordered his publisher in London to send to the Royal Public Library at Dresden one of the ten copies of the work in folio. The original of the letter is in Ebert’s manuscript correspondence in the Dresden library.

“On April 27, 1832, when the copy had not yet arrived at Dresden, an anonymous writer, in No. 101 of the Leipziger Zeitung, gave a notice of this donation, being unfortunate enough to confound Humboldt’s copy with that of Lord Kingsborough, not having seen the work himself. Ebert, in the Dresden Anzeiger, May 5, made an angry rejoinder to this “hasty and obtrusive notice.” Böttiger, whom we mentioned above and who till then was a close friend of Ebert, on May 12, in the last

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