Partial view of the Hieroglyphic Stairway's southern ballustrade. A repeated scroll pattern is internally composed of complex iconography and was probably not meant as mere ornamentation, but as a carrier of symbolic information. Nevertheless, most research on this monument has understandably focused on the large text carved on the steps of the Hieroglyphic Stairway itself. Although collapse of the structure has hopelessly jumbled a large proportion of it, it remains the longest single text in all of the Maya area.