Having found that the language of the inscriptions was Maya, of course I had no difficulty in giving to each letter its proper phonetic value, since, as I have already said, Maya is still the vernacular of the people.
I consider that the few facts brought together will suffice at present to show, if nothing else, a strange similarity in the workings of the mind in these two nations. But if these remarkable coincidences are not merely freaks of hazard, we will be compelled to admit that one people must have learned it from the other. Then will naturally arise the questions, Which the teacher? Which the pupil? The answer will not only solve an ethnological problem, but decide the question of priority.
I will now briefly refer to the myth of Osiris, the son of _Seb and Nut_, the brother of _Aroeris_, the elder _Horus_, of _Typho_, of _Isis_, and of _Nephthis_, named also NIKÉ. The authors have given numerous explanations, result of fancy; of the mythological history of that god, famous throughout Egypt. They made him a personification of the inundations of the NILE; ISIS, his wife and sister, that of the irrigated portion of the land of Egypt; their sister, _Nephthis_, that of the barren edge of the desert occasionally fertilized by the waters of the Nile; his brother and murderer _Tipho_, that of the sea which swallows up the _Nile_.
Leaving aside the mythical lores, with which the priests of all times and all countries cajole the credulity of ignorant and superstitious people, we find that among the traditions of the past, treasured in the mysterious recesses of the temples, is a history of the life of Osiris on Earth. Many wise men of our days have looked upon it as fabulous. I am not ready to say whether it is or it is not; but this I can assert, that, in many parts, it tallies marvelously with that of the culture hero of the Mayas.
It will be said, no doubt, that this remarkable similarity is a mere coincidence. But how are we to dispose of so many coincidences? What conclusion, if any, are we to draw from this concourse of so many strange similes?
In this case, I cannot do better than to quote, verbatim, from Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s work, chap. xiii:
“_Osiris_, having become King of Egypt, applied himself towards civilizing his countrymen, by turning them from their former barbarous course of life, teaching them, moreover, to cultivate and improve the fruits of the earth. * * * * * With the same good disposition, he afterwards traveled over the rest of the world, inducing the people everywhere to submit to his discipline, by the mildest persuasion.”