Maya script
Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs, is historically the native writing system of the Maya civilization of Mesoamerica and is the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered. The earliest inscriptions found which are identifiably Maya date to the 3rd century BCE in late Preclassic sites like Chakjobon and San Bartolo. Maya writing was in continuous use throughout Mesoamerica until the Spanish conquest of the Maya in the 16th and 17th centuries. Though modern Mayan languages are almost entirely written using the Latin alphabet rather than Maya script, there have been recent developments encouraging a revival of the Maya glyph system.
Maya writing used logograms complemented with 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 found its general appearance reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphs, although the two systems are unrelated.
Languages
Evidence suggests that codices and other classic texts were written by scribes—usually members of the Maya priesthood—in Classic Maya, a literary form of the extinct Chʼoltiʼ language. It is possible that the Maya elite spoke this language as a lingua franca over the entire Maya-speaking area, but texts were also written in other Mayan languages of the Petén and Yucatán, especially Yucatec. There is also some evidence that the script may have been occasionally used to write Mayan languages of Chiapas and the Guatemalan Highlands. However, if other languages were written, they may have been written by Chʼoltiʼ scribes, and therefore have Chʼoltiʼ elements.Structure
Mayan writing consisted of a relatively elaborate and complex set of glyphs, which were laboriously painted on ceramics, walls and bark-paper codices, carved in wood or stone, and molded in stucco. Carved and molded glyphs were painted, but the paint has rarely survived., the sound of about 80% of Maya writing could be read and the meaning of about 60% could be understood with varying degrees of certainty, enough to give a comprehensive idea of its structure.Maya texts were usually written in blocks arranged in columns two blocks wide, with each block corresponding to a noun or verb phrase. The blocks within the columns were read left to right, top to bottom, and would be repeated until there were no more columns left. Within a block, glyphs were arranged top-to-bottom and left-to-right. Glyphs were sometimes conflated into ligatures, where an element of one glyph would replace part of a second. In place of the standard block configuration, Maya was also sometimes written in a single row or column, or in an 'L' or 'T' shape. These variations most often appeared when they would better fit the surface being inscribed.
The Maya script was a logosyllabic system with some syllabogrammatic elements. Individual glyphs or symbols could represent either a morpheme or a syllable, and the same glyph could often be used for both. Because of these dual readings, it is customary to write logographic readings in all caps and phonetic readings in italics or bold. For example, a calendaric glyph can be read as the morpheme or as the syllable chi.
Glyphs used as syllabograms were originally logograms for single-syllable words, usually those that ended in a vowel or in a weak consonant such as y, w, h, or glottal stop. For example, the logogram for 'fish fin'—found in two forms, as a fish fin and as a fish with prominent fins—was read as and came to represent the syllable ka. These syllabic glyphs performed two primary functions: as phonetic complements to disambiguate logograms which had more than one reading ; and to write grammatical elements such as verbal inflections which did not have dedicated logograms. For example, bʼalam 'jaguar' could be written as a single logogram, ; a logogram with syllable additions, as ba-, or -ma, or bʼa--''ma; or written completely phonetically with syllabograms as bʼa-la-ma.
In addition, some syllable glyphs were homophones, such as the six different glyphs used to write the very common third person pronoun u-''.
Harmonic and disharmonic echo vowels
Phonetic glyphs stood for simple consonant-vowel or vowel-only syllables. However, Mayan phonotactics is slightly more complicated than this. Most Mayan words end with consonants, and there may be sequences of two consonants within a word as well, as in xolteʼ which is CVCCVC. When these final consonants were sonorants ' or gutturals ' they were sometimes ignored. 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. For example, the word 'fish fin' would be underspelled ka or 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; this is largely due to the difficulty in ascertaining whether this vowel may be due to an underspelled suffix.proposed the following conventions:
- A CVC syllable was written CV-CV, where the two vowels were the same: yo-po 'leaf'
- A syllable with a long vowel was written CV-Ci, unless the long vowel was , in which case it was written CiCa: ba-ki 'captive', yi-tzi-na 'younger brother'
- A syllable with a glottalized vowel was written with a final a if the vowel was , or with a final u if the vowel was or : hu-na 'paper', ba-tzʼu 'howler monkey'.
- Preconsonantal is not indicated.
A more complex spelling is ha-o-bo ko-ko-no-ma for 'they are the guardians'. A minimal set is,
- ba-ka
- ba-ki
- ba-ku =
- ba-ke
- ba-ke-le
Verbal inflections
| Voice | Transliteration | Transcription | Gloss |
| Active | u--wa | utzutzuw | "he finished it" |
| Passive | -tza-ja | tzutzaj | "it was finished" |
| Mediopassive | -yi | tzutzuy | "it got finished" |
| Antipassive | -wi | tzutzuw | "he finished" |
| Participial | -li | tzutzul | "finished" |
The active suffix did not participate in the harmonic/disharmonic system seen in roots, but rather was always -wa.
However, the language changed over 1500 years, and there were dialectal differences as well, which are reflected in the script, as seen next for the verb "he sat" :
| Period | Transliteration | Transcription |
| Late Preclassic | ? | chum? |
| Early Classic | -ja | chum-aj |
| Classic | la-ja | chum-l-aj |
| Late Classic | wa-ni | chum-waan |
Emblem glyphs
An "emblem glyph" is a kind of royal title. It consists of a place name followed by the word ajaw, a Classic Maya term for "lord" with an unclear but well-attested etymology. Sometimes the title is introduced by an adjective kʼuhul, resulting in the construction "holy [placename] lord". However, an "emblem glyph" is not 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 kʼuhul and ajaw, which form the stable core of the title. "Emblem glyph" simply reflects the time when Mayanists could not read Classic Maya inscriptions and used a term to isolate specific recurring structural components of the written narratives, and other remaining examples of Maya orthography.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 kʼuhul ajaw. 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, argued that the "emblem glyphs" referred to archaeological sites, or more so the prominence and standing of the site, 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 were generally first in the region to acquire a unique emblem glyph. Texts referring to other primary regional centers occur in the texts of these "capitals", and dependencies exist which use the primary center's glyph. Secondary centers 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 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 in. The authors demonstrated that there were many 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", 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" did not overlap, building upon Houston's earlier research. 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. Recent investigations also emphasize the use of emblem glyphs as an emic identifier to shape socio-political self-identity.