the Mexicans, while they had invented paper, wrote down their ideas, save in the cases of a few phonetic signs, as children would, by means of pictures; but the Mayas, like the Egyptians, had proceeded beyond pictures to hieroglyphs, where symbols, more or less arbitrary, stand for words or syllables, and the mind prepares itself to invent an alphabet." (Mercer's _Hill Caves of Yucatan_, p. 73.) Some of the more remarkable hieroglyphic-bearing monuments of the Mayas have been found in the palace of Palenque, the Spanish name of the old Yucatan capital. They are on stucco slabs above figures some of which show curious correspondence to Egyptian statues, wearing the pleasant but immobile expression of the latter, and decorated with a similar headdress, while in one case (fig. 33), a cartouche enclosing an inscription is carved on the plinth. The concluding panels of one of the codices form what may be called the Mexican Book of the Dead. It enforces the scheme of duty which precedes by vividly depicting the trial and judgment of the soul after death, and detailing the perils of the journey on the way to Mictlan (Payne, ii. 407). [Illustration: Fig. 33.--Statue from Palenque] Time and fanaticism have made sad havoc with the manuscripts, and no satisfactory key to their decipherment has been found, only a few words here and there being interpreted. They were executed in bright and varied colours, with a feather pencil, on prepared skins, paper, or rolls of cotton or aloe-fibre cloth, and the pictographic system thus created was applied to the purposes of ordinary life, and served as a species of writing. Matters of only passing importance were recorded on fibrous paper made from the leaves of the maguey plant; "records intended to be permanently kept were painted on the prepared skins of animals, those of the deer and bear being more commonly used. These paintings or 'pinturos' are usually executed on both sides of the skin, which was oblong in shape and often of great length, having the ends protected by boards." (Payne's _History of the New World called America_, vol. ii. p. 404.) These boards are called _analtees_, a word which may be translated _annals_. The earlier hieroglyphic characters were executed by priests, who were required to be old men, widowers, and under vows of chastity and seclusion. Such writing was known only to the initiated.