Maya hieroglyphics is the common name for the system of writing which was used by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of the Mesoamerican region. The earliest inscriptions which are identifiably Mayan date back to the 1st century BCE, and it was in continuous use up until shortly after the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century CE. It reflects the language of the Maya people spoken at that time, known generally today as the Classic Maya language, although there are indications that this Classic language had regional and time-period variants which are noted in the script. It is essentially a logosyllabic system consisting 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.
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 destruction of all written Maya works, including a library full of bark-paper codices. Later, seeking to use their native language to convert the Maya to Christianity, he derived what he believed to be a Maya alphabet. Although the Maya did not actually write alphabetically, nevertheless he recorded a glossary of Maya sounds and related symbols, which much later became a key resource in deciphering the Maya script. He was also involved in creating a Latin orthography for the Yucatec Maya language (meaning that he created a system for writing Maya languages in the Latin alphabet). This was the first such Latin orthography compiled for all of the still-living Maya languages, which number at least 30.
Only four Maya codices are known to survive to modern times. Most surviving texts in Maya hieroglyphics are to be found on pottery recovered from Maya tombs, or from monuments and stelae erected in sites which were mostly long-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.
The decipherment of the writing was a long and laborious process. 19th century and early 20th century investigators managed to decode the Maya numbers and portions of the text related to astronomy and the Maya calendar, but understanding of most of the rest long eluded scholars. 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 likely the entire basis, of their ancient writing system from the Olmecs (Schele & Freidel, 1990; Soustelle, 1984), although it was already being significantly modified and expanded on by the Maya in the Pre-Classic era. The Pre-Classic texts are less numerous and less well understood by modern archaeologists than the later more plentiful Classic and Post-Classic texts. 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-20 numerical system written with a system of bars and dots). However, it is generally believed that the Maya developed the only "complete" writing system in Mesoamerica (meaning that they could notate in writing anything they could say).
The linguistic breakthroughs
What was only in retrospect widely-recognized as a major breakthrough was made by Yuri Knorosov in the 1950s, when he published a paper 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. As Knorosov's early essays contained few new readings, and the Soviet editors added propagandistic claims to the effect that Knorosov was using a peculiarly "Marxist-Leninist" approach to decipherment, many Western Mayanists simply dismissed Knorosov'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 Knorosov and the syllabic approach. Thompson's disagreements are sometimes said to have held back advances in decipherment.
However, it was the combination of the work of Knorosov with a historically-oriented approach first outlined by Russian-American scholar Tatiana Proskouriakoff that truly set in motion the winds of change in Maya decipherment. In 1959, examining what she 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 life-span of an individual, rather than relating to religion, astronomy, or prophesy, 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 could not 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," Knorosov's breakthroughs, and others. In the story of Maya decipherment, the work of archaeologists, art historians, epigraphers, linguists, and anthropologists cannot 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 Matthews, then an undergraduate student of David Kelley's at the University of Calgary (whom Kelley sent because he could not attend). In one afternoon they managed to decipher the first dynastic list of Maya kings - the ancient kings of the city of Palenque. By determining a key sign for a royal title that prefaced many of the royal names (initially read as "makina" but now as "kinich"), 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 "The Blood of Kings: A New Interpretation of Maya Art". 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 all other 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 did not 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 is 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 - do not 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 is generally agreed by scholars that over 90 percent of the Maya texts can now be read with reasonable accuracy.
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,
- Nicolai Grube in Hamburg,
- William Fash at Harvard,
- Diane Chase and Arlan Chase at the University of Central Florida,
- Steven Houston at Brigham Young University,
- Arthur Demarest at Vanderbilt,
- Robert Sharer at the University of Pennsylvania,
- William Sanders of Pennsylvania State University,
- linguists Nicholas Hopkins and Katherine Josserand,
and many others, including a growing number of scholars in Latin America, in the nations of the Maya area.
Much of the classic era writings seem to be directly ancestral to the Chorti language. The same language appears to have been used throughout the Maya classical period and throughout the geographical reach of the Maya, even when the local language was different, although local influences of varying degrees have been detected.
References
- . ISBN 0688112048.
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