Reading the Maya Glyphs

Michael D. Coe, Mark van Stone

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9780500773321
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

In the recent past, a working knowledge of the Maya script has been confined to epigraphers, art historians and other specialists. Its very unfamiliarity to the general public, and the daunting aspect of its approximately 800 signs, have made the system appear more complex and arcane than it really is. Reading the Maya Glyphs is a compact, portable guide to enable students, tourists and armchair travellers to read and understand commonly encountered Classic Maya texts.

Topics covered include the nature of the script, the intricate Maya calendar, dynastic and political texts, and every aspect of the natural and supernatural world in which they lived. Written by the world's leading authority in Maya studies, Michael D. Coe, and illustrated by the drawings of Mark Van Stone, one of America's outstanding calligraphers, the book presupposes no previous training in Maya epigraphy or archaeology. Whether in the hands of visitors to the great Maya sites of Mexico and Central America or consulted by museum-goers, this guide should enhance their appreciation some of the world's greatest art and architecture.

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RMG pp 001-006 prelims (UK)_RMG pp 001-006 prelims (UK) 14/12/2015 15:56 Page 3 READING THE MAYA GLYPHS MICHAEL D. COE • MARK VAN STONE with glyph illustrations throughou

RMG pp 001-006 prelims (UK)_RMG pp 001-006 prelims (UK) 14/12/2015 15:56 Page 4 The late Linda Schele was an inspiration to us both, and a calligraphic mentor to Mark. We therefore dedicate this volume to her memory. Frontispiece: Lintel 8, Yaxchilan. See pages 92, 170–171. All illustrations are by Mark Van Stone unless otherwise credited. Any copy of this book issued by the publisher as a paperback is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including these words being imposed on a subsequent purchaser. First published in the United Kingdom in 2001 by Thames & Hudson Ltd, 181A High Holborn, London WC1V 7QX © 2001 Thames & Hudson Ltd, London Text © 2001 Michael D. Coe and Mark Van Stone All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-500-05110-0 Printed and bound in Slovenia by Mladinska Knjig

RMG pp 001-006 prelims (UK)_RMG pp 001-006 prelims (UK) 14/12/2015 15:56 Page 5 CONTENTS PREFACE 1 THE CULTURAL BACKGROUND OF MAYA WRITING 1.1 Overview of a civilization 1.2 Scribes and artists 1.3 The language of the inscriptions 2 THE NATURE OF THE MAYA SCRIPT 2.1 Principles 2.2 Syllabograms 2.3 Morphosyllabic signs 2.4 Logograms with phonetic complements 2.5 Polyvalence 2.6 Conflation 2.7 Some grammar 2.7.1 Nouns 2.7.2 Gender 2.7.3 Pronouns 2.7.4 Adjectives 2.7.5 Verbs 2.8 Locative prepositions 3 TIME AND THE CALENDAR 3.1 General remarks 3.2 Maya numbers 3.3 The Calendar Round 3.3.1 The 260-day Count 3.3.2 The Haab 3.4 The Long Count and the Initial Series 3.4.1 The Initial Series 3.4.2 The Supplementary Series 3.5 Distance Numbers, Period Endings, and anniversaries 4 ROYAL LIVES AND ROYAL RITUALS 4.1 General remarks 4.2 Life-cycle events 4.2.1 Birth 4.2.2 Accession 4.2.3 Death and burial 4.3 Ritual activities 4.3.1 Period Ending rites 4.3.2 Bloodletting 4.3.3 God impersonation 4.3.4 Royal dance 4.3.5 Ballplaying and ballcourts 4.3.6 Postscript 5 PLACES AND POLITIES 5.1 Emblem Glyphs 5.2 Toponyms (place names) 11 11 13 15 17 17 20 22 24 25 26 26 27 28 29 31 32 35 37 37 38 40 41 42 45 48 49 53 59 59 59 59 61 62 63 63 64 65 65 66 67 68 68 7

RMG pp 001-006 prelims (UK)_RMG pp 001-006 prelims (UK) 14/12/2015 15:56 Page 6 6 DYNASTIC NAMES AND TITLES 6.1 Titles 6.2 Rulers 7 RELATIONSHIPS 7.1 Parentage statements 7.2 Spouse 7.3 Siblings 8 WARFARE 8.1 Glyphs for general war 8.2 The taking of prisoners 9 SCRIBES AND ARTISTS 9.1 Users of brush pens 9.2 Carvers 9.3 Other titles for artists and scribes 10 CERAMIC TEXTS 10.1 General remarks 10.2 The Primary Standard Sequence (PSS) 11 THE SUPERNATURAL WORLD 11.1 General remarks 11.2 Divinity and godhead 11.3 The major gods 11.4 Paired gods 11.5 Triads 11.6 The Death Gods 11.7 The way spirit-companions 12 THE INANIMATE AND ANIMATE WORLDS 12.1 The physical world 12.1.1 The directions 12.1.2 The colors 12.1.3 The sky and the earth 12.2 Humans 12.3 Animals 12.4 Buildings and structures 12.5 Stone objects 12.6 Pottery vessels 12.7 Costume and personal adornment Illustration Examples Syllabary A Maya Lexicon Calendrical Formulae and Tables Software Programs Exercise Answers Brief Bibliography Acknowledgments Index 74 74 79 86 86 87 88 89 89 90 94 94 95 96 98 98 99 108 108 109 110 118 118 119 121 123 123 123 125 126 128 129 132 133 135 135 137 155 161 167 168 169 172 173 17

RMG pp 007-016 pref/chap1_RMG pp 007-016 pref/chap1 14/12/2015 15:59 Page 7 PREFACE Almost 160 years ago, the jungle-shrouded ruins of the ancient Maya civiliza tion of Mexico and Central America were discovered by the American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and his companion Frederick Catherwood, an English topographical artist. It was Stephens’ hope that some Champollion would soon come along and decipher the strange hieroglyphs on the many carved monuments that they had encountered, but that was not to be. A centu ry of intensive research on the glyphs resulted in the unraveling of the complex Maya calendar and astronomy, but decipherment – meaning the matching of signs to the language encoded in the script – was not to occur on any significant scale until the decade of the 1950s. Since then, there has been substantial progress, and it can now be said that we can actually read the majority of Maya texts, whether inscribed on stone or written in codices (books), in their original language. That the Maya script is a somewhat difficult one, both in its underlying structure and in the way scribes rang variations on it, cannot be denied. Yet the subject matter of most public inscriptions, like those of ancient Egypt, is rela tively restricted, and there is much repetition and redundancy. For the senior author, having visited the cities of the Nile armed with several “how to” pam phlets, and having derived much additional pleasure and understanding from being able to read royal names, dedications, and other matters important to the pharaohs, it struck him that a beginner’s manual to the Maya glyphs could also be written. Our models here are Karl-Theodor Zauzich’s excellent introduc tion to Egyptian writing, Hieroglyphs without Mystery (1992), and the more extensive (and intensive) How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs by Mark Collier and Bill Manley (1998). A brief pamphlet by the late Sir Eric Thompson, Maya Hieroglyphs without Tears, appeared in 1972, and while well illustrated, was hopelessly out of date even in the year of its publication. As in Egypt, among the Maya there was a strong linkage between text and picture, one providing a commentary on the other, and the reader to whom thi

RMG pp 007-016 pref/chap1_RMG pp 007-016 pref/chap1 14/12/2015 15:59 Page 8 8 Preface book is directed will be well rewarded when he or she discovers that relation ship in a particular stela or tablet. The fact that a ruler or scribe who lived over a thousand years ago can speak to us across the gulf of time and space, and be understood, is a reward in itself. We have presumed no previous knowledge of the Maya or their script. Our aim has been to take the reader step by step into decipherment, with examples taken from real texts. Our hope is that the amateur traveler visiting the Maya ruins, and perhaps even the beginning and intermediate student, will be able through this manual to read relatively simple texts, and to gain a deeper under standing of the remarkable civilization that produced them. One of the problems in dealing with Maya writing is that of artistic license among the early scribes – in contrast to the situation with the Egyptian script, there can be no standardized font for the Maya glyphs since the scribes were free, within bounds, to use their imaginations on how they wrote particular glyphs, and were encouraged to do so by their royal patrons (ill. 3: see Illustra tion Examples pages 137–154). The junior author, Mark Van Stone, a trained calligrapher, has produced nearly all of the drawings in this book; for each and every glyph he has tried to find order in the variation, concentrating on the dis tinctive features which differentiate that sign from all others. We would encourage the reader who would like to delve even deeper into the Classic and Post-Classic Maya to attend the Maya workshops, seminars, and weekend courses that are now given at several universities across the United States. The most venerable of these is the Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop at the University of Texas in Austin. Each of these sessions is open to registrants on any level of expertise, and attendees are furnished with Xeroxed handbooks that are themselves mines of information on both script and culture. On page 168 we have included several programs and formulae for the cal culation of Maya dates. Armed with these and with a hand calculator, the traveler to the land of the Maya ought to be able to handle most calendrical expressions; the stay-at-home student with a laptop or desk computer would be best served by any one of several excellent advanced programs which we have listed in the same appendix. Pronunciation guide The early Franciscan friars who came to the Maya realm with the Spanish con quistadores developed an orthography for writing the native languages – particularly Yukatek – alphabetically, and until recently this has remained i

RMG pp 007-016 pref/chap1_RMG pp 007-016 pref/chap1 14/12/2015 15:59 Page 9 Preface 9 use among Maya scholars, with some slight modifications. However, during the 1980s a more modern orthography was promulgated by the Academy of Maya Languages in Guatemala, and this has become the standard for both linguists and epigraphers. It is the one that will be used here, with slight modification. The vowels (a, e, i. o, u) are generally pronounced as they would be in Span ish. However, in most Mayan languages, including that of the Classic inscriptions, there is a distinction between long and short vowels; switching from one to the other can change the meaning of a word. Long vowels are marked by doubling, as in baak, “bone.” Another distinction made in Mayan is between non-glottalized and glot talized consonants. To pronounce the latter, the throat is constricted, with the result that such stops are accompanied by a very slight “explosion” of air. Glot talization is here indicated by an apostrophe (’). Examples of how meanings change with glottalization are: chab, “earth, bee” kan, “snake” ch’ab, “create, to fast” k’an, “yellow” Incidentally, linguists tell us that all bs in the language are actually glottalized (i.e. chab’, rather than chab), but since that trait makes no change in the meaning of words with b, and in the interests of simplicity, it will not be recognized in this book. It is also true that whenever a vowel begins a Mayan word, this is pre ceded by a glottal stop, but this is also the case in English (such as before the a in apple), and we see no need to confuse the reader with further apostrophes – there are quite enough here already! There are two voiceless aspirates in Classic Mayan (the language recorded in the Maya inscriptions). One is h, very similar to English h; the other is j, a guttural consonant like the j in Spanish jarabe, or the ch in German Bach. The x consonant is used to record a sound like English sh. The weak consonants y and w are sometimes used as glides from one vowel to another. In the early stages of the decipherment, it was thought that the ancient Maya scribes could only approximate the sounds of their language in the script. We now realize that the Maya writing system was extremely advanced in how it recorded not only the phonetic distinctions described above, but also fine nuances of their complex grammar. In the hands of their specialists, it was a highly sophisticated and supple instrument to express whatever they wanted to say

RMG pp 007-016 pref/chap1_RMG pp 007-016 pref/chap1 14/12/2015 15:59 Page 10 10 Preface Mexican states International boundaries Low hills 500 meter contour 1000 meter contour THE MAYA AREA YUKATAN Jaina Xkalumk’in G U L F O F C A M P E C H E Uxmal HILLS PUUK K’abah Labna Chich’en Itza QUINTANA ROO Koba Cozumel I. Comalcalco TABASCO CAMPECHE Kalak’mul Chiapa de Corzo Tonina CHIAPAS Palenque El Mirador El Perú R. U su acinta Bonampak’ Altar de Sacrificios Piedras Negras Yaxchilan Dos Pilas Río Azul Waxaktun Nak’be BELIZE PETEN Tik’al Naranjo Yaxha Caracol Tayasal Ukanal A I N S Seibal A M O M A Naj Tunich Kankuwen/Cancuen Aguateca Altun Ha C A R I B B E A N S E A Izapa GUATEMALA R. Motagua Abaj Takalik Kaminaljuyu El Baúl PA C I F I C O C E A N Quiriguá Copan HONDURAS EL SALVADOR 100 miles 150 k

RMG pp 007-016 pref/chap1_RMG pp 007-016 pref/chap1 14/12/2015 15:59 Page 11 THE CULTURAL BACKGROUND OF MAYA WRITING 1.1 Overview of a civilization Maya civilization arose, flourished, and died in the tropical lowlands of south eastern Mexico and neighboring Central America. While earlier writing systems are known outside the Maya area proper, the first fully fledged Maya inscriptions appeared before AD 250 in the Peten region of northern Guatemala, initiating the Classic period of Maya history. Between then and about AD 900, we have many hundreds of texts on stone monuments, dated in the Long Count system (to be described in 3.4); but by the 9th century city after city ceased to put up such records as the southern Maya lowlands were progressively abandoned to the encroaching forest. This marks the great collapse, and the demise of C...

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