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116 N o t e s o f M i d d l e A m e r i c a n A r c h a e o l o g y a n d E t h n o l o g y Carnegie Institution of Washington Division of Historical Research No. 33 May 15, 1944 A Tentative Identification of the Head Variant for Eleven Heinrich Berlin The calendrical part of Figure 33.1a, corresponds to a month sign of the Cauac group. I think it is Chen. The lower element is certainly the typical Cauac. The upper element is not the accustomed superfix but must be a rather uncommon variant. Generally the superfix of Chen is the same as that of the month Uo. Now it so happens that below each of the two persons flanking the stairway from the inner court to House A of the Palace the month Uo is carved with precisely the same unaccustomed superfix as in the present case, which fact can be adduced as a proof for our correctly identifying the month as Chen, the more so if one takes into consideration that our present aberrant form is at any rate more similar to the regular Chen superfix than to any other superfix of the Cauac month group. In Figure 33.1b, the time element is the normal form of the uinal with one dot above it, the whole block thus being a Secondary Series reading for the moment ? kins 1 uinal. Now in Figure 33.1c we again deal with a month. Apparently it is Kayab. It should be noted that the kan element which generally substitutes for the eye is replaced by a clearly defined eyelid, such as is known to occur, also rarely, in the Kayab hieroglyph. The dots of the beak are not very common but occur, for example, in the Kayab variant of Cab in inscription number 6 of the monumental stairway at Naranjo. Finally in Figure 33.1d our numeral is associated with a day. The glyph is still partly covered with a clay layer, but the exposed surface shows that it could be only Imix, Kan, or Ben. The most probIn 1942 during the regular season of field work undertaken at Palenque by the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia de Mexico, I had an opportunity to start cleaning House XVIII, where F. Blom (1926–1927, Fig. 135) previously had found on the back wall of the inner room a stucco inscription . During the excavation there appeared about 90 more hieroglyphs, scattered among the debris which filled the room. Unfortunately, heavy rains and lack of workmen made it impossible to clean the room entirely and therefore a few hieroglyphs probably remain buried. These are essential, since the excavated glyphs, although many of them are numerical, do not make sense. The stucco tablet found by Blom was 3 m long and 2 m high and was decorated with bluish green, painted hieroglyphs and with two or three molded stucco priests, the whole framed in a manner similar to the stucco pillar reliefs in the Palace and the Temple of the Sun. In short, this was a stucco counterpart of the famous tablets of the Temples of the Cross, of the Foliated Cross, and of the Sun at the same site. Among the newly found hieroglyphs there appeared four times a new type which beyond any doubt is a head variant of a numeral. Reproductions of these four glyph blocks are given in Figure 33.1a–d. Figure 33.1a, was drawn by Miguel Angel Fernandez from the original and Figures 33.1b–d were drawn over enlargements of photos made by me at Palenque, The four glyph blocks consist of two elements: the head variant of a numeral and a calendrical hieroglyph. Let us examine these glyphs first. A Tentative Identification of the Head Variant for Eleven 117 able reading is Imix, as we have drawn it, although only with dotted lines. The prime importance of the block in Figure 33.1d is the fact that the numeral in which we are most interested is combined with a day, whatever that may be. I shall now describe the numeral associated with the four calendrical glyphs. In all four cases the face is that of a rather young person (although probably one should not emphasize this detail, as at Palenque the sculptor tends to create pleasing features ). On the forehead, in at least two cases, is...

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