Everything about The Maya Script totally explained
The
Maya script, also known as
Maya hieroglyphs, was the
writing system of the
pre-Columbian Maya civilization of
Mesoamerica, presently the only deciphered
Mesoamerican writing system. The earliest inscriptions which are identifiably Maya date to the 3rd century BCE, and writing was in continuous use until shortly after the arrival of the
Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century CE (and even later in isolated areas such as
Tayasal). Maya writing used
logograms complemented by a set of
syllabic glyphs, somewhat similar in function to modern
Japanese writing. Maya writing was called "hieroglyphics" or "hieroglyphs" by early European explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries who didn't understand it but found its general appearance reminiscent of
Egyptian hieroglyphs, to which however the Maya writing system isn't at all related.
The languages
It is now thought that the codices and other Classic texts were written in a literary form of the
Ch'olti' language. It is possible that the Maya elite spoke this language as a
lingua franca over the entire Maya-speaking area, but also that texts were written in other
Mayan languages of the
Peten and
Yucatán, especially
Yucatec. There is also some evidence that the script may have been occasionally used to write Mayan languages of the
Guatemalan Highlands. However, if other languages were written, they may have been written by Ch'olti
scribes, and therefore have Ch'olti elements.
Structure
Maya writing consisted of a highly elaborate set of glyphs, which were laboriously painted on ceramics, walls or bark-paper
codices, carved in wood or stone, or molded in
stucco. Carved and molded glyphs were painted, but the paint hasn't often survived.
About three-quarters or more of Maya writing can now be read with varying degrees of certainty, enough to give a comprehensive idea of its structure.
The Maya script was a
logosyllabic system. Individual symbols ("glyphs") could represent either a word (actually a
morpheme) or a
syllable; indeed, the same glyph could often be used for both. For example, the calendaric glyph
MANIK’ was also used to represent the syllable
chi. (It's customary to write logographic readings in all capitals and phonetic readings in italics.) It is possible, but not certain, that these conflicting readings arose as the script was adapted to new languages, as also happened with Japanese
kanji. There was ambiguity in the other direction as well: Different glyphs could be read the same way. For example, half a dozen apparently unrelated glyphs were used to write the very common
third person pronoun
u-.
Maya was usually written in blocks arranged in columns two blocks wide, read as follows:
Within each block, glyphs were arranged top-to-bottom and left-to-right, superficially rather like Korean
Hangul syllabic blocks. However, in the case of Maya, each block tended to correspond to a noun or verb
phrase such as
his green headband. Also, glyphs were sometimes
conflated, where an element of one glyph would replace part of a second. Conflation occurs in other scripts: For example, in medieval Spanish manuscripts the word
de 'of' was sometimes written Ð (a D with the arm of an E). An English example is the ampersand (&) which is a conflation of the Norman French "et". In place of the standard block configuration Maya was also sometimes written in a single row or column, 'L', or 'T' shapes. These variations most often appeared when they'd better fit the surface being inscribed.
Maya glyphs were fundamentally logographic. Generally the glyphs used as phonetic elements were originally logograms that stood for words that were themselves single syllables, syllables that either ended in a vowel or in a weak consonant such as
y, w, h, or
glottal stop. For example, the logogram for 'fish fin' (Maya [kah] — found in two forms, as a fish fin and as a fish with prominent fins), came to represent the syllable
ka. These syllabic glyphs performed two primary functions: They were used as phonetic complements to disambiguate logograms which had more than one reading, as also occurred in Egyptian, and they were used to write grammatical elements such as verbal inflections which didn't have dedicated logograms, as in modern Japanese. For example,
b'alam 'jaguar' could be written as a single logogram,
BALAM, complemented phonetically as
ba-BALAM, or
BALAM-ma, or
ba-BALAM-
ma, or written completely phonetically as
ba-la-ma.
Phonetic glyphs stood for simple consonant-vowel or bare-vowel syllables. However, Mayan
phonotactics is slightly more complicated than this: Most Maya words end in a consonant, not a vowel, and there may be sequences of two consonants within a word as well, as in
xolte’ [ʃolteʔ] 'scepter', which is CVCCVC. When these final consonants were
sonorants
(l, m, n) or
glottals (h, ’) they were sometimes ignored ("underspelled"), but more often final consonants were written, which meant that an extra vowel was written as well. This was typically an "echo" vowel that repeated the vowel of the previous syllable. That is, the word [kah] 'fish fin' would be written in full as
ka-ha. However, there are many cases where some other vowel was used, and the orthographic rules for this are only partially understood. Here's our current understanding:
- A CVC syllable was written CV-CV, where the two vowels (V) were the same: yo-po [yop] 'leaf'
- A syllable with a long vowel (CVVC) was written CV-Ci, unless the long vowel was [i], in which case it was written CiCa: ba-ki [baak] 'captive', yi-tzi-na [yihtziin] 'younger brother'
- A syllable with a glottalized vowel (CV’C or CV’VC) was written with a final a if the vowel was [e,o, u], or with a final u if the vowel was [a] or [i]: hu-na [hu’n] 'paper', ba-tz’u [ba’tz’] 'howler monkey'.
A more complex spelling is
ha-o-bo ko-ko-no-ma for [ha’o’bkohkno’m] 'they are the guardians'. (Vowel length and glottalization are not always indicated in common words like 'they are'.) A minimal set, not fully translated, is,
» ba-ka [bak]
ba-ki [baak]
» ba-ku [ba’k] or [ba’ak]
ba-ke [baakel] (underspelled)
See
here
for a more substantial discussion and, from page 70 on, a partial list of glyphs and glyph blocks.
Emblem glyphs
An "emblem glyph" is a kind of royal title. It consists of a word
ajaw – a Classic Maya term for “lord” of yet unclear etymology but well-attested in Colonial sources – and a place name that precedes the word
ajaw and functions as an adjective. An expression “Boston lord” would be a perfect English analogy. Sometimes, the title is introduced by an adjective k’uhul “holy” or “sacred”, just as if someone wanted to say “holy Boston lord”. Of course, an "emblem glyph" isn't a "glyph" at all: it can be spelled with any number of syllabic or logographic signs and several alternative spellings are attested for the words k’uhul and ajaw, which form the stable core of the title. The term "emblem glyph" simply reflects the times when mayanists couldn't read Classic Maya inscriptions and had to come up with some nicknames isolating certain recurrent structural components of the written narratives.
This title was identified in 1958 by
Heinrich Berlin, who coined the term "emblem glyph". Berlin noticed that the "emblem glyphs" consisted of a larger "main sign" and two smaller signs now read as "
K'uhul Ahaw". Berlin also noticed that while the smaller elements remained relatively constant, the main sign changed from site to site. Berlin proposed that the main signs identified individual cities, their ruling dynasties, or the territories they controlled. Subsequently, Marcus argued that the "emblem glyphs" referred to archaeological sites, broken down in a 5-tiered hierarchy of asymmetrical distribution. Marcus' research assumed that the emblem glyphs were distributed in a pattern of relative site importance depending on broadness of distribution, roughly broken down as follows:
Primary regional centers (capitals) (Tikal, Calakmul, and other "superpowers") were generally first in the region to acquire a unique emblem glyph(s). Texts referring to other primary regional centers occur in the texts of these "capitals", and dependencies exist which utilize the primary center's glyph.
Secondary centers (Altun Ha, Luubantuun, Xunantunich, and other mid-sized cities had their own glyphs but are only rarely mentioned in texts found in the primary regional center, while repeatedly mentioning the regional center in their own texts.
Tertiary centers (towns) had no glyphs of their own, but have texts mentioning the primary regional centers and perhaps secondary regional centers on occasion. These were followed by the
villages with no emblem glyphs and no texts mentioning the larger centers, and
hamlets with little evidence of texts at all. This model was largely unchallenged for over a decade until Mathews and Justeson, as well as Houston argued once again that the ‘emblem glyphs’ were the titles of Maya rulers with some geographical association.
The debate on the nature of "emblem glyphs" received a new spin with the monograph by Stuart and Houston. The authors convincingly demonstrated that there were lots of place names-proper, some real, some mythological, mentioned in the hieroglyphic inscriptions. Some of these place names also appeared in the "emblem glyphs," some were attested in the "titles of origin" (various expressions like “a person from Boston”), but some were not incorporated in personal titles at all. Moreover, the authors also highlighted the cases when the "titles of origin" and the "emblem glyphs" didn't overlap, building upon an earlier research by Houston. Houston noticed that the establishment and spread of the Tikal-originated dynasty in the Petexbatun region was accompanied by the proliferation of rulers using the Tikal "emblem glyph" placing political and dynastic ascendancy above the current seats of rulership.
History
It was until recently thought that the Maya may have adopted writing from the
Olmec or
Epi-Olmec. However, recent discoveries have pushed back the origin of Mayan writing by several centuries, and it now seems possible that the Maya were the ones who invented writing in Mesoamerica.
Knowledge of the Maya writing system continued into the early colonial era and reportedly a few of the early
Spanish priests who went to
Yucatán learned it. However, as part of his campaign to eradicate pagan rites, Bishop
Diego de Landa ordered the collection and destruction of written Maya works, and a sizeable number of
Maya codices were destroyed. Later, seeking to use their native language to convert the Maya to Christianity, he derived what he believed to be a Maya "alphabet" (the so-called
de Landa alphabet). Although the Maya didn't actually write alphabetically, nevertheless he recorded a glossary of Maya sounds and related symbols, which was long dismissed as nonsense but eventually became a key resource in
deciphering the Maya script, though it has itself not been completely deciphered. The difficulty was that there was no simple correspondence between the two systems, and the names of the letters of the Spanish alphabet meant nothing to Landa's Maya scribe, so Landa ended up asking the equivalent of
write H: a-i-tee-cee-aitch "aitch", and glossed a part of the result as "H".
Landa was also involved in creating a Latin
orthography for the
Yukatek Maya language, meaning that he created a system for writing Yukatek in the
Latin alphabet. This was the first Latin orthography for any of the Mayan languages, which number around thirty.
Only four
Maya codices are known to have survived the conquistadors. Most surviving texts are found on pottery recovered from Maya tombs, or from
monuments and
stelae erected in sites which were abandoned or buried before the arrival of the Spanish.
Knowledge of the writing system was lost, probably by the end of the 16th century. Renewed interest in it was sparked by published accounts of
ruined Maya sites in the
19th century.
Decipherment
The decipherment of the writing was a long and laborious process. Nineteenth century and early 20th century investigators managed to decode the
Maya numbers and portions of the texts related to
astronomy and the
Maya calendar, but understanding of most of the rest long eluded scholars. A major role in deciphering Mayan hieroglyphic writing was played by
Yuri Knorozov. In 1952 he published a paper "Ancient Writing of Central America" arguing that the so-called "de Landa alphabet" contained in
Bishop Diego de Landa's manuscript
Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán was actually made of
syllabic, rather than
alphabetic symbols. He further improved his decipherment technique in his 1963
monograph "The Writing of the Maya Indians" and published translations of Mayan manuscripts in his 1975 work "Maya Hieroglyphic Manuscripts". In the
1960s, progress revealed the dynastic records of Maya rulers. Since the early
1980s it has been demonstrated that most of the previously unknown symbols form a
syllabary, and progress in reading the Maya writing has advanced rapidly since.
The Maya may seem to have inherited some elements, and perhaps the entire basis, of their ancient writing system from the
Olmecs, which was significantly modified and expanded by the Maya of the Pre-Classic era. Pre-Classic texts are less numerous and less well understood by archaeologists than the later Classic and Post-Classic texts. (However, the
Isthmian (or Epi-Olmec) script once thought of as a possible direct ancestor of the Mayan script is now known to be several centuries too recent, and may instead be a descendant.) Other related and nearby Mesoamerican cultures of the period were also heirs to the Olmec writing system, and developed parallel systems which shared key attributes (such as the base-twenty
numerical system written with a system of bars and dots). However, it's generally believed that the Maya developed the only complete writing system in
Mesoamerica, meaning that they were the only civilization that could write everything they could say.
Other breakthroughs
As Knorozov's early essays contained few new readings, and the
Soviet editors added propagandistic claims to the effect that Knorozov was using a peculiarly "
Marxist-
Leninist" approach to decipherment, many Western
Mayanists simply dismissed Knorozov's work. However, in the 1960s more came to see the syllabic approach as potentially fruitful, and possible phonetic readings for symbols whose general meaning was understood from context began to be developed. Prominent older epigrapher
J. Eric S. Thompson was one of the last major opponents of Knorozov and the syllabic approach. Thompson's disagreements are sometimes said to have held back advances in decipherment.
In 1959, examining what Russian-American scholar
Tatiana Proskouriakoff called "a peculiar pattern of dates" on stone monument inscriptions at the Classic Maya site of
Piedras Negras, Proskouriakoff determined that these represented events in the lifespan of an individual, rather than relating to religion, astronomy, or prophecy, as held by the "old school" exemplified by Thompson. This proved to be true of many Maya inscriptions, and revealed the Maya
epigraphic record to be one relating actual histories of ruling individuals: dynastic histories similar in nature to those recorded in literate human cultures throughout the world. Suddenly, the Maya entered written history.
Although it was now clear what was on many Maya inscriptions, they still couldn't literally be read. However, further progress was made during the 1960s and 1970s, using a multitude of approaches including pattern analysis, de Landa's "alphabet," Knorozov's breakthroughs, and others. In the story of Maya decipherment, the work of
archaeologists, art historians, epigraphers,
linguists, and
anthropologists can't be separated. All contributed to a process that was truly and essentially multidisciplinary. Key figures included
David Kelley,
Ian Graham,
Gilette Griffin, and
Michael Coe.
Dramatic breakthroughs occurred in the 1970's – in particular, at the first
Mesa Redonda de Palenque, a scholarly conference organized by
Merle Greene Robertson at the Classic Maya site of
Palenque held in December, 1973. A
working group was led by
Linda Schele, an art historian and epigrapher at the
University of Texas at Austin, which included
Floyd Lounsbury, a linguist from
Yale, and
Peter Mathews, then an undergraduate student of David Kelley's at the
University of Calgary (whom Kelley sent because he couldn't attend). In one afternoon they managed to decipher the first
dynastic list of Maya kings – the ancient kings of the city of Palenque. By identifying a sign as an important royal title (now read as the recurring name K'inich), the group was able to identify and "read" the life histories (from birth, to accession to the throne, to death) of six kings of Palenque.
From that point, progress proceeded at an exponential pace, not only in the decipherment of the Maya glyphs, but also towards the construction of a new, historically-based understanding of Maya civilization. The "old school" continued to resist the results of the new scholarship for some time. A decisive event which helped to turn the tide in favor of the new approach occurred in 1986, at an exhibition entitled "". It was organized by
InterCultura and the
Kimbell Art Museum and curated by Schele and Yale art historian
Mary Miller. This exhibition and attendant catalogue – and international publicity – revealed to a wide audience the new world which had latterly been opened up by progress in decipherment of Maya hieroglyphics. Not only could a real history of ancient America now be read and understood, but the light it shed on the material remains of the Maya showed them to be real, recognisable individuals. They stood revealed as a people with a history like that of all other human societies: full of wars, dynastic struggles, shifting political alliances, complex religious and artistic systems, expressions of personal property and ownership, and so forth. Moreover, the new interpretation, as the exhibition demonstrated, made sense out of many works of art whose meaning had been unclear, and showed how the material culture of the Maya represented a fully-integrated cultural system and world view. Gone was the old Thompson view of the Maya as peaceable astronomers without conflict or other attributes characteristic of most human societies.
However, three years later in 1989, a final counter-assault was launched by supporters who were still resisting the modern decipherment interpretation. This occurred at a conference at
Dumbarton Oaks. It didn't directly attack the methodology or results of decipherment, but instead contended that the ancient Maya texts had indeed been read but were "epiphenomenal". This argument was extended from a populist perspective to say that the deciphered texts tell us only about the concerns and beliefs of the society's elite, and not about the ordinary Maya. Michael Coe in opposition to this idea described "epiphenomenal" as:
» a ten penny word meaning that Maya writing is only of marginal application since it's secondary to those more primary institutions – economics and society – so well studied by the dirt archaeologists.
Linda Schele noted following the conference that this is like saying that the inscriptions of ancient Egypt – or the writings of Greek philosophers or historians – don't reveal anything important about their cultures. Most written documents in most cultures tell us about the elite, because in most cultures in the past, they were the ones who could write (or could have things written down by scribes or inscribed on monuments).
Progress in decipherment continues at a rapid pace today, and it's generally agreed by scholars that over 90 percent of the Maya texts can now be read with reasonable accuracy. As of 2004, at least one phonetic glyph was known for each of the syllables marked in this chart:
»
Current leaders in the field of interpreting Maya culture and Maya decipherment include many archaeologists, epigraphers, linguists, and art historians. Key names working at present are:
David Friedel at SMU
David Stuart at the University of Texas
Nikolai Grube at the University of Bonn, Germany
Alfonso Lacadena at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Simon Martin at the University of Pennsylvania Museum
William Fash at Harvard University
Diane Chase and Arlen Chase at the University of Central Florida
Stephen Houston at Brown University
Arthur Demarest at Vanderbilt University
Robert Sharer at the University of Pennsylvania,
William Sanders of Pennsylvania State University
Karl Taube at the University of California, Riverside
Marc Zender at Harvard, Peabody Museum
Dmitri Beliaev, Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow
linguists Katherine Josserand (deceased as of 2007) and Nicholas Hopkins
linguist John Robertson at Brigham Young University
linguist Søren Wichmann the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology at Leipzig
and many others, including a growing number of scholars in Latin America, in the nations of the Maya area.Further Information
Get more info on 'Maya Script'.
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