week or so before this chapter was written, and, moreover, much may be gathered from the preceding pages supplemented by the illustrations. The kinship of the stone reliefs with wood-carving, except at Copan and Quirigua, has already been indicated, and the symbolic nature of Maya ornament is too obvious to need especial mention. Attention may be called to the use of glyphs, extremely ornamental in themselves, to give balance to a design, and to the horror vacui which appears in all reliefs except those of Palenque. Though bound by convention, the result in a large measure of the symbolic nature of his designs, the Maya artist occupies a relatively high plane amongst barbarous peoples. In particular the quality of his line is excellent,
even in stone, and in certain respects, notably foreshortening (especially in the treatment of feathers, for which see Figs. 61 and 87; pp. 297 and 367), he was superior to the sculptor of Egypt or Assyria. One peculiarity of Maya art lies in the fact that the artist was obsessed by the motive of the serpent (rattle-snake) head. In nearly all its essentials this design appears in the remarkable gargoyle from Copan shown in Fig. 85. We have here the exaggerated upper jaw, the front fang, and the curl at the corner of the mouth. One detail is lacking, viz. the nose-ornaments which were usually added to the reptile. Maudslay has shown how derivatives of this design, often modified almost beyond identification, are constantly applied to every form of ornament, such as the edges of girdle-flaps and so forth, and the point has been elaborated by Spinden. Most interesting is the almost invariable occurrence of the
