Like the Egyptians, the Mayas had a demotic (popular) and a sacred alphabet; many of the signs in each being similar to those of the Egyptians.
In the ancient edifices of the Mayas we find inscriptions in stone, wood, and stucco. Those of stone are in three styles, intaglio, bas-relief, and mezzo-relievo. The wood-carvings are in bas-relief ; those of stucco in mezzo-relievo.
The writings of Mexico proper (anciently Yucatan was not part of Mexico) were altogether pictorial. Not so those of the Mayas; but, like the Egyptians, the Maya scholars represented material objects by drawing their outlines to render their conceptions more plain to those uninitiated in the arts of reading and writing.
They also employed symbolic characters, in order to conceal truths discovered by them when they did not care to make them known to the multitude; perhaps believing that "the secrets of nature or art discovered by philosophers, must be hidden from the unworthy."[1]
Besides pictorial and symbolic characters, they had phonetic or alphabetical signs, letters, which they called uooh. The Maya hierogrammatists often
- ↑ Roger Bacon, de secret, oper. art. et nat., cap. i.
