art of writing, the building of cities, the institution of a religious system, the cultivation of all sciences and of astronomy in particular.'

If philology, like architecture, may serve as guide in following the footsteps of a people in its migrations on the face of the earth, then we may safely affirm that the Mayas, at some epoch or other, travelling along the shores of the Indian Ocean, reached the mouth of the Indus, and colonized Beloochistan and the countries west of that river to Afghanistan; where, to this day, Maya tribes live on the north banks of the Kabul River.1

The names of the majority of the cities and localities in that country are words having a natural meaning in the Maya language; they are, in fact, those of ancient cities and villages whose ruins cover the soil of Yucatan, and of several still inhabited.

I have made a careful collation of the names of these cities and places in Asia, with their meaning in the Maya language. In this work my esteemed friend the Rt. Rev. Dr. Dn. Crecencio Carillo y Ancona, the present bishop of Yucatan, has kindly helped me, as in many other studies of Maya roots and words now obsolete; the objects to which they applied having ceased to exist or having fallen into disuse. Bishop Carillo is a literary gentleman of well-known ability, the author of an ancient history of Yucatan, a scholar well versed in the language of his forefathers. He is of Maya descent.

Following the Mayas in their journeys westward, along the seacoasts, we next find traces of them at the head of the

'London Times, weekly edition, March 4, 1879, p. 6, col. 4.

This list is given in full in my large work, yet unpublished, The Monuments of Mayach and their Historical Teachings.

Persian Gulf, where they formed settlements in the marshy country at the mouth of the Euphrates, known to history under the name of Akkad.

The meaning of that name, given to the plains and marshy lands situated to the south of Babylonia, has been, until of late, a puzzle to students of Assyriology; and it still is an enigma to them why a country utterly devoid of mountains should have been called Akkad. Have not the well-known scholars, the late George Smith of Chaldean Genesis fame, Rev. Prof. A. H. Sayce of Oxford in England, and Mr. François Lenormant in France, discovered, by translating one of the bilingual lexicographical tablets found in the royal library of the palace of King Asurbanipal in Nineveh, that in Akkadian language it meant "mountain," "high country," whilst the word for "low country," "plain," was Sumer; and that, by a singular antithesis, the Sumerians inhabited the mountains to the eastward of Babylonia, and the Akkadians the plains watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates and the marshes at the mouth of this river?

The way they try to explain such strange anomaly is by supposing that, in very remote times, the Akkadi dwelt in the mountains, and the Sumeri in the plains; and that at some unknown, unrecorded period, and for some unknown reason, these nations must have migrated en masse, exchanging their abodes, but still preserving the names by which they were known, regardless of the fact that said names were at variance with the character of the localities in which they now dwelt; but they did it both from custom and tradition.1

Shall we say, "Si non é vero é ben trovato," although this may or may not be the case, there being no record that said 'François Lenormant, Chaldean Magic and Sorcery, p. 399.

permutation ever took place, and it therefore cannot be authenticated.

The Maya, of which we find so many vestiges in the Akkadian language, affords a most natural, thence rational, etymology of the name Akkad, and in perfect accordance with the character of the country thus named. Akal is a Maya word, the meaning of which is "pond," "marshy ground; and akil is a marshy ground full of reeds and rushes, such as was and still is lower Mesopotamia and the localities near the mouth of the Euphrates.

As to the name Sumer, its etymology, although it is also very clear according to the Maya, seemed perplexing to the learned Mr. Lenormant, who nevertheless has interpreted it correctly, "the low country." The Akkadian root sum evidently corresponds to the Greek núμßos, "bottom," "depression," and to the Maya, kom, a valley. The Sumeri would then be the inhabitants of the valleys, while the Akkari would be those of the marshes.

From this and from what will directly appear let it not be supposed that the ancient Akkadian and ancient Maya are cognate languages. The great number of Maya words found in the Akkadian have been ingrafted on it by the Maya colonists, who in remote times established themselves in Akkad, and became prominent, after a long sojourn in the country, under the name of Kaldi.

Through the efforts of such eminent scholars as Dr. Hincks, Sir Henry Rawlinson, Dr. Oppert, Monsieur Grivel, Professor Sayce, Mr. François Lenormant, and others, the old Akkadian tongue, or much of it, has been recovered, by translating the

1

Sir Henry Layard (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 356) says that the ancient name of the Mediterranean was Akkari.

tablets that composed King Asurbanipal's library. Mr. Lenormant has published an elementary grammar and vocabulary of it. From this I cull the few following words that are pure Maya, with the same signification in both languages. Having but a limited space to devote here to so interesting a subject, in my selection I have confined myself to words so unequivocally similar that their identity cannot be questioned.