Maya Decipherment

Coba, Stela 5 is one of three remarkable monuments at the site that record the full, unabridged “era” date using all 24 periods of what I call the “Grand Long Count.” (The other monuments are Stelae 1 and 27). This immense span of time we can transcribe as

13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.0.0.0.0
4 Ajaw 8 Kumk’u

In this note I would like to point out a couple of interesting features of this date on Stela 5, as well to a problem evident in its published drawing (Graham 1997:36), traceable in turn to an error in the restoration of the stela’s fragments done around 1980.

If we look closely at the published drawing (Figure 1a, at left) we can see that the final components of the Grand Long Count, although damaged by a break in the stone, include the familiar K’atun and K’in periods at the blocks Qp11 and Pp14. However, there are two too many intervening glyphs in what are labelled as rows 12 and 13, where only the Tun and Winal periods would be expected. Close inspection of the photograph shows that this is in fact due to an unfortunate gap created by a faulty modern restoration of the stela’s two main fragments. That is, rows “12” and “13” look to actually encompass a single row of two glyphs that was poorly fitted together during restoration (Figure 2). Once corrected (as shown in Figure 1b), the two glyph blocks can easily accommodate the expected Tun and Winal periods and make for a perfectly acceptable date overall, with a proper tally of twenty-four periods.

Two interesting features of the extended Long Count date stand out. The most obvious is the conch shell form of the “Bak’tun” sign as Pp11 — a unique occurrence in all Maya inscriptions, for which I have no explanation. The other noteworthy aspect of the full date concerns the orientations of the many “13” coefficients. There are twenty in all (Pp1 is surely an ISIG glyph) but just two show the number as a horizontal prefix, as seen in the seventh unit at Qp4 and with the Bak’tun at Pp11; all other 13 prefixes are vertical. Again I have no explanation for this odd feature (horizontal numbers do not appear on the other “era” dates recorded at Coba) but it’s probably significant that these two examples are spaced thirteen units apart. That is to say, the higher of these units is thirteen positions above the Bak’tun. I suspect that these horizontal number coefficients served as visual cues, used by the scribes to subtly mark an internally significant structure to the extended calendar system. It’s worth noting, too, that the corrected fit of the stela fragments produces thirteen rows of glyphs in the record of this important date — surely not a coincidence.

REFERENCE

Graham, Ian. 1997. Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 8, Part 1: Coba. Cambridge: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.