Calendar

Notes on a Painted Text from Palenque

David StuartLeave a comment

Among the many buildings and chambers of Palenque’s Palace is House B, facing the Northeast Court and located, as one might expect, between Houses A and C. The well-preserved structure was built sometime in the early reign of K’inich Janab Pakal, although no written dedication date survives. In fact, the only hieroglyphic text we know from House B is painted on the back wall of one of its rear room, evidently a name caption that accompanied an elaborate stucco relief now largely destroyed. In the late 18th century this scene was still intact, recorded by the artist Armendáriz who accompanied the 1787 expedition to Palenque led by Antonio del Río. His drawing is reproduced here (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Armendáriz

The painted text (Figure 2, below) was not included in Armendáriz’s drawing, but it today survives near the upper right portion of the now-missing scene, just above the seated figure to the right of the central “T” window. The glyphs were photographed and drawn by Merle Greene Robertson (1985:Fig. 170-1); here I include a new drawing based on her photograph that reveals a number of key details that help in its decipherment, and which bring up one very interesting epigraphic detail.

Figure 2. The House B text (Sketch by David Stuart)

The text is a name phrase, although it’s difficult to know who it refers to in Palenque’s known history. Here’s my tentative analysis and translation of it, to be discussed in some detail below:

ha-ta / i-tz’i-WINIK / ch’o-ko / AJ-pi-tzi-la? / OHL-la / 7-“BEN”?
ha’at itz’in winik ch’ok aj pitzl(al) ohl Wuk “Ben”
“You, younger brother, the ??, Seven Ben(?)…”

Let’s first look first at the final three or so glyphs. The fourth and fifth block (AJ-pi-tzi-la? / OHL-la) clearly show a title or name found elsewhere in Palenque’s texts. Aj pitzlal ohl is found in the Cross Group and elsewhere, for example, as a common reference to K’inich Kan Bahlam, to eldest son of K’inich Janab Pakal. The full phrase is difficult to translate — “ballplayer” (aj pitz) is surely inadequate — but it does incorporate two known roots: pitz, “to play ball” and ohl, “heart, center.” However one translates the full phrase, aj pitzlal ohl is known to be a pre-accession name for K’inich Kan Bahlam, and was also used by the later K’inich K’uk’ Bahlam (see the Tablet of the 96 Glyphs).

The final discernable glyph of the caption looks to be a day sign “Ben” with a 7 number prefix. Here I doubt “7 Ben” functions as a date, for it’s location suggests it work as a calendar name in reference to some historical individual. In other Palenque inscriptions we find a similar use of such 260-day records as names, as with the sculptor named “5 Kan” mentioned on the so called “Death’s Head” from the Cross Group, and the lord named “4 Ahaw” who is portrayed on the bench platform of Temple XIX. Here I take 7 Ben — if that’s what the glyph is — to be a reference to the individual named also by the aj pitzlal ohl title.

Near the front of the name phrase, in the first and second blocks, we find a much clearer and readable title for this person: itz’i(n) winik ch’ok, “younger brother youth” (see Stuart 1997). This points to the obvious conclusion that the subject of this caption is some junior sibling, but just who’s brother is he? We can’t know for sure. In Palenque’s texts we find the same term applied to the ruler K’inich K’an Joy Chitam, the younger brother of K’inich Kan Bahlam. These glyphs look to be early in style, possibly contemporaneous with the architecture of House B, dating to the mid-seventh century, during the reign of their father. “7 Ben,” if a personal name, seems an unlikely designation for Pakal’s younger son, so might it be the younger brother of Pakal? Not being sure of the generation of the subject, his historical identity remains unclear.

Leaving the speculation aside, we still need to address the very first part of the initial glyph, a sequence that looks to be ha-ta. This is perhaps a previously unrecognized spelling of the 2nd person independent pronoun ha’at, “you,” known from at least a few other inscriptions at other sites (Figure 3). One of the more interesting aspects of the decipherment during the last two decades has been the identification of similar first- and second-person pronouns in numerous inscriptions, like “my,” “you,” “we” and so on (see Stuart 1993; Hull, Carrasco and Wald, 2009). The Palenque example is, I suggest, another case, incorporating a form a address to an otherwise conventional-looking name caption: “You, younger brother, the ??, 7 Ben (?)…”

Figure 3. Two possible examples of the pronoun ha’-at. From Copan, St. 49 (left) and the ‘Birth Vase’ (right; see Taube 1994)

Considering the possible presence of the unusual pronoun, it might prove useful to review that there are two basic types of pronoun classes attested in the glyphs — and known in Mayan languages — known as the “ergative” and “absolutive” sets. Ergative pronouns are prefixes that mark possession on nouns and also the subjects of transitive verbs. The most common ergative prefix in the hieroglyphic script is the third-person u- or (u)y- (pre-vocalic), but there are others. We have attested thus far:

ERGATIVE SET:
1st person singular: ni- / w-V
2nd person singular: a- / aw-V
3rd person singular: u- / y-V
1st person plural: ka- / k-V-
2nd person plural: unattested (reconstructed in proto-Ch’olan as *i- / *iw-V by Kaufman and Norman)
3rd person plural: u-…(-oob) / y-V…(-oob)

Absolutive pronouns work differently, as suffixes that specify the subjects of intransitive verbs or else the subjects of stative statements when attached to nouns or verbs. These are also known from the Classic inscriptions, if a bit incompletely:

ABSOLUTIVE SET:
1st person singular: -een
2nd person singular: -at ~ -et
3rd person singular: -ø
1st person plural: -o’n(?)
2nd person plural: unattested (-ex? ~ -ox?)
3rd person plural: -oob

These absolutive suffixes can in turn appear with the demonstrative particle ha’- to make a class of demonstrative or independent pronoun (ex. ha’-at, “[it is] you here”). These include some irregular forms, but the relationship is clear:

DEMONSTRATIVE SET:
1st person singular: hiin(?) < *ha’-in(?)
2nd person singular: ha’-at
3rd person singular: ha’-i ~ haa’-ø
1st person plural: unattested (ha’o’n)
2nd person plural: unattested (ha’ex)
3rd person plural: ha’-oob

So, returning to our Palenque text, we may have a possible second person independent pronoun in an unusual context, introducing a name caption. If this is the case, one question becomes: just who is addressing the younger brother? Who is saying “you”? Perhaps one of the standing figures in the scene? Or, in an odd discursive twist, could it be the viewer of the artwork? Such questions often come into play when assessing the voices behind such obscure, non-third person texts, especially when they are incomplete or lacking context.

Another vexing issue, of course, centers on the historical identity of the mysterious “younger brother,” and whether he lived in Pakal’s generation or the next.

REFERENCES:

Hull, Kerry, Michael Carrasco, and Robert Wald. 2009. The First-Person Singular Independent Pronoun in Classic Ch’olan. Mexicon, vol. XXXI, no. 2, pp. 36-43.

Robertson, Merle Greene. 1985. The Sculpture of Palenque: Volume II. The Early Buildings of the Palace and the Wall Paintings. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Stuart, David. 1993. Breaking the Code: Rabbit Story. In Lost Kingdoms of the Maya, by G. Stuart and G Stuart, pp. 170-1. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society.

_________. 1997. Kinship Terms in Maya Inscriptions. In The Language of Maya Hieroglyphs, ed. by M. J. Macri and A. Ford, pp. 1-11. San Francisco: Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute.

Taube, Karl A. 1994. The Birth Vase: Natal Imagery in Ancient Maya Myth and Ritual. In The Maya Vase Book, Volume 4, pp. 650-685 New York: Kerr Associates.

Notes on an Inscription Fragment from the Southern Peten

David StuartLeave a comment
Inscription fragment. Photo by O. Chinchilla. (Adapted from Luin and Matteo, 2010)

A fragment of an interesting Late Classic inscription has recently been published and with a preliminary analysis of its content (Luin and Matteo 2010). Here I would like to offer a few observations on the significance of the text, featuring some slight revisions to the reading of its five historical dates.

The fragment consists of two joined pieces and presently is in a private collection in Guatemala. It was first documented by Oswaldo Chinchilla, whose photographs are reproduced here, and then published this year by Luin and Matteo in the proceedings of the 2009 Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala. As those authors note, it is difficult to pin down the original find-site of this partial inscription. Based on the style of the glyphs, it seems likely that the text comes from the southern Peten (Luin and Matteo 2010:1237). In my subjective view, an origin not too distant from the area of Machaquila or the upper Río Pasion seems likely.

Luin and Matteo propose the following readings for the four Calendar Round dates of the text, only one of which (8 Kib 14 Pop, at pA4, pB4) is fully preserved:

9.16.6.9.1 3 Imix 4 Mak
9.16.6.15.16 8 Kib 14 Pop
9.16.6.15.19 11 Kawak 17 Pop
9.16.6.12.6 3 Kimi 9 Pax

I agree with the first two dates, but would like to suggest alternative readings of the last two as follows (with Distance Numbers indicated):

9.16.6.9.1 3 Imix 4 Mak
+ .6.15
9.16.6.15.16 8 Kib 14 Pop
+ .4
9.16.6.16.0 12 Ajaw 18 Pop
+ .3.13 (added to 8 Kib 14 Pop)
9.16.7.1.9 3 Muluk 7 Tzek

An Distance Number (DN) of 5.15 introduces the entire text, clearly suggesting we are picking up the story in mid-stream. The implied earlier date would be 9.16.5.3.6 9 Kimi 14 Yaxk’in.

The difference in our interpretations of the dates is based on the reading of certain visual details, including the short DN at pB5a, which Luin and Matteo interpret as 3-la-ta. The number prefix on this glyph is almost surely 4, however, with one of the dots broken away. I would therefore would place the resulting date at 9.16.6.16.0 12 Ajaw 18 Pop, a mere one day later than their reconstruction specifies, but in agreement with the “18 Pop” clearly indicated at pA6a.

Luin and Matteo read the following DN .3.13 at pA7a as leading to an earlier date 3 Kimi 9 Pax, reached by means of subtraction from their 11 Kawak 17 Pop. However, the I-u-ti written at pA7b (with the I playfully inserted in the u fish’s mouth) would most likely point to a forward reckoning. Moreover, the day sign at pB7a is certainly 3 Muluk, with the month missing in the adjacent glyph.

A somewhat unusual structure of the DN may have led to some confusion. I suggest that the short DN of 4 days (4-la-ta) was understood rhetorically to be a “parenthetical count” leading to a secondary passage, providing context to the more featured event that had occurred four days prior. Precedent exists for this in other inscriptions, where very short DNs of only a few days are excluded from the larger time-frame of a text’s narrative. In this way, I beleive that the DN .3.13 should be added to the earlier cited base 8 Kib 14 Pop. This then leads to 9.16.7.1.9 3 Muluk 7 Tzek, which is in full agreement with the day sign written at pB7a, “3 Muluk.”

Putting aside this very dry discussion of numbers and chronology, what does the inscription actually say?

The text is woefully incomplete, of course, but Luin and Matteo have teased out a number of interesting features, not the least of which is a new Emblem Glyph, previously unattested, written at pA3. This looks to be K’UH(UL)-jo-bo-AJAW. Luin and Matteo suggest, probably rightly, that the core elements of this Emblem Glyph may be a spelling of jobon, a Yukatekan noun root meaning “hole, pit.” I find the event associated with this title (pA2) difficult to analyze, but I’m not so certain it’s an episode of accession to rulership, as Luin and Matteo suggest.

The following passage is more clear. This is clearly an “arrival” event (HUL-li, at pB4a) on 8 Kib 14 Pop, as Luin and Matteo mention. Often such arrival verbs are followed directly by a place name, but here the missing portion of the block could have also held a personal reference of some sort. What comes next is a fascinating term tz’u-lu-KALOOM-TE’, for tz’ul Kaloomte’. Tz’ul is familiar from Yukatekan sources as a term often translated as “foreigner,” although its original, pre-Conquest meaning may have been more like “boss, master” (see Bolles 2001). Kaloomte’ is of course the title for very high-ranking rulers, often associated with one of the four cardinal directions. The sense here may be of a ruling “overlord” arriving from an outside location. Four days after this comes a conquest record, written as CH’AK-PET?-ne, perhaps ch’ahkaj peten, “peten was conquered.” This intriguing statement might conjure up an image of some foreign army entering the region we today call El Petén, but it’s important to stress that peten was a general term holding several meanings, including simply “island” or “province.” I hesitate to be too certain of this reading of the place name, however, for I may be off in seeing the PET logogram deciphered years ago by Nikolai Grube — inspection of the original stone could well reveal this sign to be something else entirely. However we might choose to analyze the statement, the general sense of this greater passage seems to concern an unknown “overlord” arriving in an area and within days conquering a town or region within it.

The final passage of the text, as Luin and Matteo note, records a second arrival 73 days later, written as HUL-li-TI ko-cho-TE’ (block pA8). This seems to indicate an arrival of someone — perhaps our same Kaloomte’ — at a place called Kochte’ or Tikochte’. Here it is interesting to see the preposition sign TI following directly after HUL-li, to specify “he arrives at…” The theme may again be one of war and conquest, for the subject of the verb at pB8 looks to carry the military title “He of Twenty Captives.”

There is certainly more to say about this beautiful text, but here I have only chosen to touch on my revisions of the text’s chronology, as well as to offer a few modest insights into the nature of the history it relates, building on Luin and Matteo’s initial work. Hopefully future investigations will reveal something about the original setting of the inscription, or at least lead to the recovery of additional fragments that can fill in the wide gaps of its story-line.

REFERENCES:

Luin, Camilo, and Sebastian Matteo. 2010. Notas sobre algunas textos jeroglíficos en colecciones privadas. In XXIII SImposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, pp. 1235-1250. Museo Nacional de Anrqueologia y Etnologia, Guatemala.

Bolles, David, 2001. Combined Dictionary – Concordance of the Yucatecan Maya Language. http://www.famsi.org/reports/96072/

The “Era” Date on Coba, Stela 5

David Stuart5 Comments

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.

Figure 1. Coba Stela 5, right side, with correction to the lower glyph blocks. Drawing by Ian Graham (from Graham 1997:36).

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.
Figure 2. Detail of photograph of Coba Stela 5 text (from Graham 1997)

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.

Q & A about 2012

David Stuart41 Comments

Seems the whole “end of the world in 2012” brouhaha is stirring again with the upcoming release of the special effects disaster film, 2012. While topics on this blog are often meant to be pretty scholarly and technical, I thought it useful to offer a simple run-down of important points about what the ancient Maya really had to say — or not — about the “end” of their calendar.

Does the Maya calendar end in 2012?

No it doesn’t. What will happen is a recurrence, an anniversary of sorts, of a key mythological date in the distant past. The Maya wrote this as 13.0.0.0.0 in their “Long Count” calendar (an abbreviation of a much bigger number), which fell on August 11, 3114 B.C. (some correlations of the two calendars say August 13, but I don’t really care). This “creation date” was not the beginning of everything, however. Maya mythological texts tell us that plenty was happening long, long before this starting point of the current era. On December 21, 2012 (some say December 23) we come again to a numerological recurrence of 13.0.0.0.0. The Long Count calendar continues well beyond this date, too. In fact, the numerology of the calendar demands that there will be other similar recurrences of this same date in the far distant future, on a scale of octillions of years. The scale of Maya time reckoning dwarfs anything in our own cosmology by many orders of magnitude.

What did the Maya say about 2012?

They actually said very little, if anything. Only one ancient inscription refers to the upcoming 13.0.0.0.0 date in 2012, from a now destroyed site named Tortuguero. The question we scholars have struggled with is whether the final few hieroglyphs of that text describe anything about what will happen. A few years ago I put forward a very tentative and incomplete reading of these damaged glyphs, including a possible use of a verb meaning “descend” and a name of a god, Bolon Yokte’. Much of it was iffy and remains so; I’m not sure I believe much of what I wrote back then. More recently my colleague Steve Houston has pointed out the glyphs may not even pertain to that date anyway. So there’s considerable ambiguity just in the reading of the glyphs and the rhetorical structure of the Tortuguero passage. What we can say with confidence is that the ancient Maya left no clear or definite record about 2012 and its significance. There is certainly no ancient claim that the world or any part of it will come to an end.

Who came up with this crazy idea?

New Age hacks and, now, Hollywood producers. The idea can be traced largely back to the novelist and mystic named Frank Waters, who in the 1960s and 70s wrote a number of novels and cultural treatises on Native Americans of the American southwest, including his 1963 work, Book of the Hopi (he was not an anthropologist). One of Waters’ last works was Mexico Mystique: The Coming Sixth Age of Consciousness (1975), an odd pastiche of Aztec and Maya philosophies wherein he proposed that the “end” of the calendar would somehow involve a transformation of world spiritual awareness. Waters’ ideas got picked up and expanded upon by Jose Arguelles in his insanely misguided but influential book The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology (1987). Many different writers have followed with their own strange books and essays on the “meaning” of 2012, mostly contradicting one another.

What about the astronomy?

The Maya were fine astronomers, but the 2012 date has little if anything to do with astronomy. Despite claims about the appearance of a “galactic alignment” in late December three years from now, modern scientific astronomers reject this notion pretty much out of hand. Besides, no ancient Maya text or artwork makes reference to anything of the kind.

What do the present-day Maya have to say about 2012?

Although the 260-day round of the ancient calendar system survived in a few areas of highland Guatemala, the 2012 date has nothing to do with it. It’s only associated with the Long Count, which ceased being used well before the conquest. So, any mention of 2012 by modern Maya peoples is probably an example of media or New Age influence.

So, in sum, what’s been widely circulated in the popular imagination about 2012 has little to do about true ancient Maya belief or notions of prophecy.

My brief comments will probably instigate even more endless 2012 discussion and debate, but I respectfully request that such exchanges be taken elsewhere. What more I have to say on the subject, mostly on the nature of the ancient calendar as a whole, will appear in my upcoming book about Maya time, appearing sometime next year.

An Obscure Text from Tonina

David Stuart2 Comments

Some years ago Linda Schele took photographs (one below) of a partial stucco inscription at Tonina.  I have never seen this personally, and I have no idea where it is at the ruins.  Despite its murky details and the thick moss in places, I think the glyphs can be tentatively teased out as follows (reconstructed elements are in square brackets):

tna-stucco-text-copy3

pA1: [10-4-WINIK-ji-ya]

pB1: 16-HAAB-ya

pA2: u-ti-[ya]

pB2: [8]-AJAW

pA3: I-u-ti

pB3: 10-OK

pA4: [18]-TZIKIN-ni (the month “Xul”)

pB4: U-3-?-TE'(?)

So, we have a straightforward calendrical reckoning here, a distance number of 16.8.10 linking 8 Ajaw to a later date written as 10 Ok 18 Xul. This can only be:

9.13.0.0.0   8 Ajaw 8 Wo

9.13.16.8.10   10 Ok 18 Xul

These are two familiar dates at Tonina.  The first is obviously a key k’atun-ending, much recorded in the site’s inscriptions. The second date. as seen in an earlier post here on Maya Decipherment, is a station of the strange 9.2.5 “chinstrap” cycle recorded in several Tonina inscriptions, but nowhere else.  This was the third such station in the reign of the ruler K’inich Baaknal Chahk, and the final semi-preserved glyph may simply mark this. There I can just make out a possible “chinstrap” sign after U-3-, and above what could be a Pax patron head variant of TE’. The name of the king would have likely followed just after this.

Might anyone know just where this text is located at Tonina? Do the poor glyphs still even exist? I’m not sure when Linda took her slide, but I suspect it was on a visit no later than the mid-90s.  If anyone has info, I would much appreciate hearing it.

UPDATE: I had assumed this is of stucco, perhaps still attached to a masonry wall somewhere. But I could be wrong — looking again, it could be a stone fragment.

UPDATE (03/08/10): In the original post I gave a mistaken Long Count placement of the 10 Ok date (thanks to Jesus Mora for pointing this out in his comment). The correct date is given above — 9.13.16.8.10 10 Ok 18 Xul.