that these forms should have the same significance; and by no stretch of the imagination can it be supposed that in these alphabets so created, without correspondence, thirteen out of sixteen signs should be the same in form and the same in meaning.
It is probable that a full study of the Central American monuments may throw stronger light upon the connection between the Maya and the European alphabets, and that further discoveries of inscriptions in Europe may approximate the alphabets of the New and Old World still more closely by supplying intermediate forms.
We find in the American hieroglyphs peculiar signs which take the place of pictures, and which probably, like the hieratic symbols mingled with the hieroglyphics of Egypt, represent alphabetical sounds. For instance, we find this sign on the walls of the palace of Palenque, 
; this is not unlike the form of the Phœnician t used in writing, 
and 
; we find also upon these monuments the letter o represented by a small circle, and entering into many of the hieroglyphs; we also find the tau sign (thus 
) often repeated; also the sign which we have supposed to represent b, 
; also this sign, 
, which we think is the simplification of the letter k; also this sign, which we suppose to represent e, 
; also this figure, 
; and this, 
. There is an evident tendency to reduce the complex figures to simple signs whenever the writers proceed to form words.
Although it has so far been found difficult, if not impossible, to translate the compound words formed from the Maya alphabet, yet we can go far enough to see that they used the system of simpler sounds for the whole hieroglyph to which we have referred.
Bishop Landa gives us, in addition to the alphabet, the signs which represent the days and months, and which are evidently compounds of the Maya letters. For instance, we have this figure as the representative of the month Mol, 
. Here we
