History of Research

The Devil’s Writing

mayoid
Stephen Houston and Felipe Rojas (Brown University)

 

The Spaniards expressed a certain ambivalence about Maya glyphs. They called them letras, a neutral word suggesting an equivalence to their own writing system. But they could also describe the script in terms of caracteres. This implied, among other nuances, a cipher or emblem of magical import (Drucker 2022:61–62; Hanks 2010:3).[1] At the time, charaktêres, an obvious cognate with caracteres, were mystical signs created by adding circles or other embellishments to preexisting scripts (Gordon 2014:266–67). Devoid of grammar, often written for single use, they were thought to be “unutterable,” being visionary in origin and direct conduits to mystical meaning (Gordon 2014:263). John Dee, the Elizabethan-era occultist, even claimed to have received his own esoteric script from angels (Harkness 1999:166). Maya glyphs, by contrast, were understood to be legible if challenging to read. Like other writing, they recorded, among their quite varied content, “the deeds of each king’s ancestors” and reports of “years, wars, pestilences, hurricanes, inundations, hungers” (Houston et al. 2001:26, 40).

But the Devil was seldom far away. Missionaries and colonial authorities recognized that glyphs served a role in enchantment and conjuring (Hanks 2010:8; Houston et al. 2001:36). The destruction and confiscation of books—the focus was not on the stone carvings from centuries before the Conquest—would, according to the Franciscan Bernardo de Lizana, writing in 1633, “cure and cauterize the pestilential cancer [of idolatry] that was eating away at the Christianity that [the friars] had planted with such great effort” (Chuchiak 2010:91). Diego de Landa had paved the way a few generations before: “[w]e found a great number of books of these letters of theirs, and because they had nothing but superstitions and falsities of the devil (demonio), we burned them all, which they felt amazingly and gave them great sorrow” (Landa 1959:105, translation ours, from scanned version by Christian Prager; see also Restall et al. 2023:164; Landa used demonio, “demon,” as a singular and collective noun, for it could apply both to Lucifer and individual Maya gods, including Hunhau [from Hun Ajaw, presumably], said to be the “prince” [príncipe] of them all [Landa 1959:60]). The shift to Latin script, even for esoteric works out of Spanish control, showed how obnoxious the glyphs had become to Spanish authorities and to local scribes wishing to employ a (by then) more prestigious script when integrating Maya and Christian beliefs (Chuchiak 2010:106). 

Thoughts about devilish writing bring to mind a text, from Europe but approximately the same time, said to have been written by the Devil himself (or, more precisely, an “archfiend” named Per Talion, Ansion et Amlion [Clark 1891:497–499]; see also Drucker 2022:105, fig. 4.9]). This appears in Teseo Ambrogio degli Albonesi’s Introductio in Chaldaicam lingua[m], Syriaca[m], atq[ue] Armenica[m], & dece[m] alias linguas (original here), 1539, 212r (Figure 1). Ambrogio received a report of this document, supposedly in the demon’s own hand, after the fiend was conjured by one Lodovico de Spoletano. The demon was asked to respond to a money-grubbing query, suitable for the corruptor of venal souls… and in Italian no less, perhaps his notional language! The question: Sel Cavaliero Marchantonio figliolo de riccha donna da Piacenza ha ritrovati tutti li dinari che laso Antonio Maria, et se no in qual loco sono?; “has Cavaliero Marchantonio, son of a rich woman from Piacenza, found all the dinars that Antonio Maria left, and if not where are they?” (Hayden 1855:189).

Figure 1. Demonic writing, 1539. Introductio in Chaldaicam lingua[m], Syriaca[m], atq[ue] Armenica[m], & dece[m] alias linguas, 1539, 212r.
The demon obliged. He caused a pen to levitate over the page and left his script, which, mindful of his soul, Ambrogio declined to study (see the translation of his Latin text below, in Appendix 1). An anonymous poem about the Devil’s letter, from 1746, understands that reserve: “No more, ye critics, be your brains perplex’d T’elucidate the darkness of the text; No farther in the endless search proceed, The devil wrote it – let the devil read!” (Yeowell 1855:146). This book has been much gawked at, especially in a copy at the Queen’s College Library, Oxford. On September 29, 1663, it was viewed by no less a personage than King Charles II of England, along with his queen, Catherine of Braganza, his brother, James, the Duke of York, and Anne, the Duchess of York (Clark 1891:497). A compilation of English comments on the volume at Queen’s appears here.

 

The pitchfork script and swirling tails point to their purported maker. The way the tails transgress lines hints at some aggressive property of the “writer” and may also establish links between different parts of the text. Generally, a vertical and horizontal orientation guides the pitchforks, separated by the occasional dots, in sets of 1, 3, and 4, or jagged lines of 1, 2, 3 and 4, and a few signs shaped like Xs. The final sign with whiplashing tail, looks vaguely like the astrological sign of Taurus or the planet Mercury. If there is code here, it is seemingly written from left to right, like Latin script. That reading order is confirmed by the shorter, final line, which fails to reach the right side. The lines contain respectively (and somewhat approximately, given the challenge of counting individual signs), 31, 28, 22, 25, 21, 24, and 16 signs, for 143 graphs in total, a wordy response to a question of some 118 letters. (The reading order is confirmed by the shorter, final line.) Out of the entire sequence, only one set of signs appears to repeat, the 10th and 11th from the left in the second row, but that may be from the imperfect application of ink in the block made for this illustration (see the smear of pigment to the upper left). A rough typology of signs, much affected by whether a missing tine is intended or not, or a flange or dot, reaches about 35 signs, the upper range of an alphabet; the inverted pitchfork without central tine may be among the most numerous, coming to some 10 examples. To an intriguing extent, the use of similar signs that find contrast by orienting right, left, up, down, resembles Sir Thomas More’s Utopian alphabet from 1518 (Figure 2). More’s shapes, likely devised by his printer and friend, Pieter Gillis of Antwerp, were influenced by geometrical concepts of the Humanist Renaissance, with a greater number of “closed” forms than evident in the Devil’s pitchforks (Houston and Rojas 2022:251; see also Campbell et al. 1978). 

Figure 2. Orientational scripts of the Humanist period: a, the Utopian alphabet, Thomas More, De optimo reip. statu deque nova insula Utopia (Basel: Johann Froben, 1518), 13 (photo, Folger Shakespeare Library [PR2321.U82 1518 Cage]); b, vignette of Ambrogio’s letter from the Devil.
This is not the only document said to have been written by the Devil. On the morning of August 11, 1676, a nun named Maria Crocifissa della Concezione claimed to have found a letter from the Dark One on the floor of her cell; her own face was covered in ink, hinting at more than some slight role in its production (Figure 3; Langeli 2020:560–561). The letter is claimed to have been translated in 2017 by Daniele Abate of the LUDUM Science Center, a children’s museum in Sicily, after, we are told, Abate had obtained software on the “Dark Web.” The wave of publicity, as here, does not seem to have been followed by any publication. Perhaps the “Dark Web” had a pleasing resonance with “Dark Lord.” Later, in his novel The Leopard, Guiseppe Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, referred in light disguise to “the two famous and indecipherable letters framed on the wall of a cell, one to the Devil from Blessed Corbèra to convert him to virtue, and the other the Devil’s reply, expressing, it seems, his regret at not being able to comply with her request” (di Lampedusa 1960:82). This was no accident, for Sister Maria was born Isabella Tomasi, Lampedusa’s distant aunt by many generations. In looking at the letter, it is puzzling that the devil would use such a different script, and in the space of only 250 years or so! Most likely, of course, the Sister’s script was influenced by the books of Athanasius Kircher, such as his Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652–1654), or by various specimen charts that predated her own wild improvisation (Drucker 2022:figs. 6.4, 6.6). 
Figure 3. The Devil’s letter, given to Maria Crocifissa della Concezione, Monastero di Palma Montechiaro, Agrigento, Sicily.

 

Also the work of the Devil, at least by far later report, is the Bohemian Codex Gigas, now in the National Library of Sweden. In 1638, during the 30 Year’s War, it was seized by Swedish troops from the collections amassed in Prague by the Emperor Rudolf II. Eventually, it made its way to the royal library in Stockholm. This unusually large book, 89 x 49 cm, consisting of 310 parchment leaves, was made between AD 1200 and 1230 (Figure 4). A popular account insists that the image was painted in homage to the Devil, who assisted in its production, or that it might even have been made by his hand. This fable, emphatically denied by the National Library, is not quite the same as the stories from Ambrogio and Sister Maria, for the image of the Devil, unusual for its frontal position, sits across from an image of Jerusalem. When the book was open, he would squirm across from the city; when closed, his body would collapse into it. Fascination with the image has led to its over-exposure and fading, as can be seen by comparing the two images below.

Figure 4. The Codex Gigas, with signs of fading over time (ca AD 1210-1220), Latin (309) bl, Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm, CC BY Per B. Adolphson, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

That the Devil was literate, assumed to be capable of polite missives and written colloquies, doubles back to Maya glyphs and Spanish views of them. Those works were just as impenetrable, just as unreadable, as the “characters” confronting Ambrogio and Sister Maria: the Maya books were best burned, or sent as idle curiosities to be viewed back in Europe with interest and, perhaps, trepidation.

Note 1. See the Oxford English Dictionary, with a citation from John Metham, 1449, writing in Middle English, “Anone he dyght hys sacrifyse..hys cerkyl gan dyuyse With carectyrs and fygurys, as longe to the dysposycion Off tho spyrytys.”; Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “character (n.)”; Singer 1989:53; see also Hamann 2008:35, on these “abstract and esoteric and asonic” fantasies).

Appendix 1. Describing the Devils’ writing

Non tam cito pennam Magus deposuerat, quam cito qui aderant pennam eandem corripi, et in aera sustolli, et in eandem charta infra scriptos characteres velociter scribere viderunt scribentis vero manu nullus comprehendere potuerat Ut mihi aliquem retulit, qui cum multis presens fuer[at et] cum postmodum Papiam venisset, et factum ut fuerat enarraret. Rogatus archetypum mihi reliquit. Cuius verba adscripsi. Characteres vero tales erant. Quid vero characteres illi insinuarent, quam[ve] responsionem ad quaesita redderent scire o[mn]ino non curavi Quandoquidem vanas Magorum superstitiones, et somniis similia deliramenta, naturali quodam semper odio prosecutus fuerim. Nec mihi quispiam persuadere umquam potuerit, ut talia placerent. Non enim me latuit, huiusmodi nequam spiritus, suis semper cultoribus, laqueos tendere, ut irretintos in perniciem trahent. Exemplo nobis iamdudum esse potuit (ut multos praeteream) antiquus ille Simon Magus, qui Apostolroum temporibus misere interiit.Et in presentia hic, de quo loquimur, qui paulo ante, cum se rei militari totum dedisset, ac sub eius vexillo armatos tercetnos, sive quadrigentos duceret pedites, in rusticorum semel manus incidit. Qui tot illum ferris tridentibus (quot invocatus Amon, in suis characteribus effinxerat), appetentes, percusserunt, vulneraverunt, transfixerunt, Et tricipiti apud inferos Cerbero consignandum, mulits undique laeatalibus cribratum vulneribus, exanime tandem corpus ille reliquerunt. Verum cum in dignoscendis variarum linguarum characteribus, ac literarum figuris, propenso semper animo versarer, nolui etiam hoc scribendi genus, pratermittere intactum …

No sooner had Magus put down the quill than those who were present saw that same quill being grabbed and being borne in the air, and [they saw that quill] on the same sheet writing quickly writing the characters below. Yet the hand of the one writing no one could perceive. So he brought me someone, who had been present with many [others] and had just come to Papia. And he related how the deed had happened. Having been asked, he left me the archetype [i.e., the original manuscript], whose words I wrote down.— Such indeed were the signs: As to what those characters actually insinuated, and what response they gave to the questions asked I did not care to know at all, especially since with a certain natural hatred I have always chased away the empty superstitions of “Magicians” and their delirious visions similar to dreams. And no one has ever persuaded me that such things were acceptable. For it does not escape me that such evil spirits lay snares for those who worship them that they may drag them entangled into ruin. That famous Simon Magus, who died a miserable death in the days of the Apostles, can serve as an ancient example for us—I pass over many others [in silence]–this man of whom we speak, who a little before, had devoted himself entirely to military matters, and led three or four hundred footmen armed under his standard, once fell into the hands of peasants, who sought him, struck him, wounded him, and pierced him with as many tridents of iron (as the invoke Amon had represented in his characters). Having been consigned to the triple-headed Cerberus in the underworld, wounded on all sides by fatal wounds, they finally left his body lifeless. Since in distinguishing the characters of various languages, and the shapes of the letters, I ponder them with an ever attentive mind, I did not want to pass over this kind of writing undiscussed …

References

Campbell, Lorne, Margaret Mann Phillips, Hubertus Schulte Herbrüggen, and
J. B. Trapp. 1978. Quentin Matsys, Desiderius Erasmus, Pieter Gillis, and
Thomas More. Burlington Magazine 120:716–25.

Chuchiak, John F., IV. 2010. Writing as Resistance: Maya Graphic Pluralism and Indigenous Elite Strategies for Survival in Colonial Yucatan, 1550–1750. Ethnohistory 57(1):87–116.

Clark, Andrew. 1891. The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Antiquary of Oxford, 1632-1695, Described by Himself, Volume 1, 1632-1633, pp. 497–99. Oxford: Oxford Historical Society.

di Lampedusa, Giuseppe. 1960. The Leopard, trans. by Archibald Calquhoun. London: Collins and Harvill.

Drucker, Johanna. 2022. Inventing the Alphabet: The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gordon, Richard. 2014. Charaktêres Between Antiquity and Renaissance: Transmission and Re–Invention. In Les savoirs magiques et leur transmission de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, edited by Véronique Dasen and Jean–Michel Spieser, pp. 253–300. Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo.

Hamann, Byron E. 2008. How Maya Hieroglyphs Got Their Name: Egypt, Mexico, and China in Western Grammatology since the Fifteenth Century. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 152(1):1–68.

Hanks, William F. 2010. Converting Words: Maya in the Age of the Cross. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Harkness, Deborah E. 1999. John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Houston, Stephen D., Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, and David Stuart, eds. 2001. The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

———–, and Felipe Rojas. 2022. Sourcing Novelty: On the “Secondary Invention” of Writing. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 77/78:250–66.

Hayden, Henry H. 1855. “Mysterious Scrawl” in Queen’s College, Library, Oxford. Notes and Queries 11:159.

Kircher, Athanasius. 1652–1654. Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 3 vols. Rome: V. Mascardi. 

Landa, Diego de. 1959. Relación de las cosas de Yucatán. Biblioteca Porrúa 13. Mexico City: Editorial Porrua.

Langeli, Attilio B. 2020. Scritture nascoste scritture invisibili, ovvero: Giochi di prestigio con l’alfabeto. La Bibliofilía 122(3):557–72.

Restall, Matthew, Amara Solari, John F. Chuchiak IV, and Traci Ardren. 2023. The Friar and the Maya: Diego de Landa and the Account of the Things of Yucatan. Denver: University Press of Colorado.

Singer, Thomas C. 1989. Hieroglyphs, Real Characters, and the Idea of Natural Language in English Seventeenth Century Thought. Journal of the History of Ideas 50:49-70.

Tozzer, Alfred M. 1941. Landa’s Relación de las cosas de Yucatán: A Translation. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology XVIII. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Yeowell, J. 1855. “Queen’s College, Oxford.” Notes and Queries 11:146.

Finding the Founder: Old Notes on the Identification of K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ of Copan

David StuartLeave a comment
KYKM name
Figure 1. Name of K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’, from Altar Q of Copan (Photo by D. Stuart).

by David Stuart (The University of Texas at Austin)

One of the most famous of ancient Maya rulers is K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ (KYKM) (“Solar-Green-Quetzal-Macaw”), the Early Classic founder of the Copan dynasty (Figure 1). He was celebrated by ancient Copanecos throughout the site’s 400 year history, and his legend lives on today in the key sources on Copan’s archaeology (W. Fash 2001; B. Fash 2011:35-47). He was even the subject of a 2001 PBS documentary, The Lost King of the Maya.

Given KYKM’s notoriety it’s interesting to reflect on how little we knew of his history before the mid-’80s. By that time archaeologists and epigraphers had a general outline of Copan’s Late Classic dynasty, and KYKM’s glyph had even been recognized as a personal name of some sort (the K’inich prefix being a strong indication, given its established use as a pre-posed title on late royal names at Palenque). But whose name? Proskouriakoff identified the glyph as a title, a reference to “certain ‘parrots’ that seem to turn up in troubled times” (Prouskouriakoff 1986:129). And both Gary Pahl (1976) and Lounsbury (corresponding in 1978) were closer to the mark, each seeing the glyph as a personal name but still unsure as to its exact nature. Pahl proposed it to be a variant name of the sixteenth ruler, whereas Lounsbury couldn’t commit to any historical identification, but thought it to be in reference to a Late Classic figure as well.

KYKM note
Figure 2. Stuart’s 1984 notes on identifying KYKM as an Early Classic ruler
COP St J back
Figure 3. Back of Copan, Stela J. (Photo by D. Stuart, 1987)

In retrospect this ambiguity is understandable, for the name glyph was in those years known only from much later inscriptions dating the reigns of the last five or six Copan kings (very early texts from close to KYKM’s reign finally appear in excavations during the 1990s, such as the “Xukpi Stone” and the “Motmot Marker”). It’s no wonder therefore that Proskourikoff surmised the glyph to be a general title for troublesome parrots (are there any other kind?), and not that of a definable historical figure.

This all changed in the mid 1980s, when KYKM’s true role in Maya history finally came into focus. In 1984 I became convinced that he was not a Late Classic protagonist at all but rather an early king, probably the founder of the dynasty and the first in the long line of sixteen rulers. I recently came across my old notes from that time (Figure 2), showing my line of thinking in proposing his early placement at or near the beginning of the dynasty (Note 2). The famous mat-shaped text on Stela J (Figure 3) offered the most important clue, for it showed that KYKM’s accession could be linked to the much earlier Bak’tun ending of 9.0.0.0.0, in 435 AD. Another piece of the puzzle came a couple of years after these scribblings when, in the summer of 1986, Linda Schele and I recognized that the the first figure depicted on Altar Q wore on his headdress an elaborate combination of the sings K’IN-YAX-K’UK’-MO’, placing  him at the very beginning of the famous sequence of sixteen kings (Figure 4) (Stuart and Schele 1986).  The inscription atop Altar Q soon made more sense as well, for it became clear that that the opening three dates belonged to this same Early Classic time-frame, narrating KYKM’s ch’am-k’awiil accession rite at Teotihuacan in September 6, 426 followed by his arrival back at Copan 152 days later. The last two dates of the altar’s text concerned its dedication centuries later in 775, early in the reign of the sixteenth ruler, Yax Pasaj Chan Yopaat (Note 3).

KYKM Alt Q name
Figure 3. The name-headdress of K’inich Yan K’uk’ Mo’ on the west side of Altar Q (Photo by D. Stuart).

Of course we have learned a good deal more about KYKM since the 1980s. Soon after he was properly placed in Copan’s dynastic sequence, some archaeologists still expressed informal doubts about his historical veracity, positing that he might not have been a true ancestral king but a character in some constructed, questionable history (a strangely cynical outlook on Maya histories in general, I think). But then in the 1990s his tomb and resting place were identified deep within Copan’s acropolis by the University of Pennsylvania excavations, within the so-called Hunal building phase directly under Structure 10L-16 (see Bell, Canuto and Sharer [2004] for an excellent overview of early Copan archaeology and history). Since then, one epigraphic clue suggested that KYKM may originally have been from the site of Caracol, Belize. KYKM’s story remains enigmatic in many ways, but we know that he settled at Copan in 427, probably in anticipation of the great Bak’tun ending that came less than a decade later. After several generations he was remembered as the singular cultural and political hero of ancient Copan, and after nearly twelve centuries of obscurity he’s emerged once again as a great figure in Maya history.

Notes

Note 1. In my overview of early Copan history I mistakenly noted that the identification of KYKM’s role as the dynastic founder came in 1983 (Stuart 2004:227). The dates on surrounding pages in my notebook make it clear it was in 1984.

Note 2. Looking at my old notes, students of epigraphy will see that I make use of old sign readings that are rejected today and may even seem unfamiliar – Thompson’s “hel” reading for the TZ’AK sign, for example, and Lounsbury’s “mak’ina” for what we know to be K’INICH. In fact, on the right margin of the notes here illustrated, one can see the clear inklings of the K’INICH decipherment, noting the K’IN-ni-chi substitution found on Copan’s Hieroglyphic Stairway and in a few other texts. This was confirmed around the same year.

Note 3. In my hand-written notes I botched the Long Counts for the Early Classic dates on Altar Q, even though I correctly placed them roughly 17 k’atuns before the altar’s dedication. I wasn’t using a computer program, and I was thrown-off by the mention of “17 k’atuns” which I took far too literally as a precise expression of elapsed time. It did not take much time to realize that this was instead a rare rounded Distance Number, used from time to time in Copan’s inscriptions. The actual dates on Altar Q’s top are: 8.19.10.10.17 5 Caban 15 Yaxkin (“takes k’awiil”); 8.19.10.11.0 8 Ahau 18 Yaxkin (“comes from the ‘wite’naah'”); 8.19.11.0.13 5 Ben 11 Muan (“arrives”); 9.17.5.0.0 6 Ahau 13 Kayab (PE dedication); 9.17.5.3.4 5 Kan 12 Uo (unknown). On the west face we find the isolated record of Yax Pasaj Chan Yopaat’s accession on 9.16.12.5.17 6 Caban 10 Mol, placed between his portrait and that of the founder.

References

Bell, Ellen E, Marcello Canuto and Robert J. Sharer (eds.). 2004. Understanding Early Classic Copan. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Museum.

Fash, Barbara. 2011. The Copan Sculpture Museum: Ancient Maya Artistry in Stucco and Stone. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum Press.

Fash, William L. 2001. Scribes, Warriors and Kings: The City of Copan and the Ancient Maya. New York: Thames and Hudson.

Pahl, Gary. 1976. A Successor-Relationshop Complex and Associated Signs. In The Art, Iconography, and Dynastic History of Palenque, Part 3, edited by M.G. Robertson, pp. 35-44. Pebble Beach, CA: Robert Louis Stevenson School.

Proskouriakoff, Tatiana. 1986. Maya History. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Stuart, David. 2004. The Beginnings of the Copan Dynasty. In Understanding Early Classic Copan, ed. by E. Bell, M. Canuto and R.J. Sharer, pp. 215-248. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Museum.

Stuart, David, and Linda Schele. 1986. Yax K’uk’ Mo’, the Founder of the Lineage of Copan. Copan Notes no. 6. Proyecto Acropolis Arqueologico Copan.

Old Notes on /jo/ and /wo/

David StuartLeave a comment

by David Stuart, The University of Texas at Austin

jo
Figure 1. A late example of the jo syllable from the Dresden Codex.

Way back in 1987 Steve Houston wrote me with some important insights about a hieroglyphic sign found from time to time in the Dresden and Madrid Codices and in the monuments of the Classic period (Figure 1). Early Maya epigraphers such as Benjamin Lee Whorf and J. Eric S. Thompson had long assumed this was a  word-sign for hax, “to drill,” based on the images of fire-drilling that accompanied its appearances in the codices. Most scholars accepted this rather iffy reading until Steve’s important realization that the sign was instead a CV syllable for ho, as in the spelling ho-ch’o and ho-ch’a for hoch’, another verb root in Yucatec meaning “to drill.” (Years later this reading would be refined to jo, reflecting the key distinction made in Classic Mayan between /h/ and /j/ – a contrast that was lost historically in colonial and modern Yucatec [Grube 2004]) . In the summer of 1987, after some days exploring sites and museums in Yucatan, I struck up a correspondence with Steve about a few new and exciting patterns I had seen involving his new jo sign.  These appeared to solidify the reading beyond any doubt. Soon his thoughts on jo made their into print in the journal Antiquity, discussed within his larger article of phoneticism in Maya writing (Houston 1988).

u-wo-j-li
Figure 2.  u wojool, “the glyphs of…”

Building on Steve’s ideas, I posited that the jo sign might help to explain a common hieroglyph found in the texts of the Puuc region, u-?-jo-li, evidently a possessed noun based on a root Coj (Figure 2). My notes of that time explored how an unknown sign before Steve’s jo appeared elsewhere with the possible value wo, suggesting u wojool (or as I then wrote it, u uohol), “the writing, hieroglyph of…”  This reading came to pan-out nicely, and in the texts of Yucatan and northern Campeche it appears in reference to the hieroglyphic decoration on certain architectural features such as jambs and door lintels (Maya texts can be strangely self-referential in this way).

tiho-figure
Figure 3. Examples of the spelling ti-jo AJAW from emblem glyph titles at Dzibilchaltun, Yucatan. (a) DBC:St.19, (B) DBC: inscribed bone. (Photos by the author)

My notes also touched the possibility that jo could explain a title that appeared on Stela 19 from Dzibilchaltun, Yucatan, reading ti-jo AJAW? (Figure 3a).  This seemed to me to be an emblem glyph for the local ruler, and a Classic use of the historical name of nearby Merida, T’ho or Tiho. The idea was particularly exciting to me at the time (and still is), as it suggested a rare case of a historical place name traceable back to the Late Classic period. Later finds at Dzibilchaltun produced better examples of this emblem title, as on a beautiful bone object excavated by the INAH project directed by Ruben Maldonado (Figure 3b). We now know that this local emblem presents a more complex term incorporating another glyph, as in ?-KAAN ti-jo, a sequence that is surely related to the elaborated name of ancient Mérida known from colonial sources Ichcaansiho’. Dzibilichaltun was perhaps an early political and ritual center that was later moved to present-day Mérida, also the site of a very large ruin at the time of the conquest.

At any rate, shown below are my hasty notes from July 31, 1987 and then a letter to Steve Houston of a month later (where I also posit confirmation of the common NAL sign reading, which came into play in our collaborative work on Classic place names).  My school work took over that fall and I never got to publish on u-wojol and the glyph for the ancient name of Merida, Tiho. So here it is.

References Cited:

Grube, Nikolai. 2004. The Orthographic Distinction between Velar and Glottal Spirants in Maya Hieroglyphic Writing. In The Linguistics if Maya Writing, edited by Soren Wichmann, pp. 61-82. The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Houston, Stephen D. 1988. The Phonetic Decipherment of Maya Glyphs. Antiquity 62:126-135.

doc-oct-21-2016-1-21-pm
David Stuart’s working notes on the jo (ho) and wo (uo) syllables, July 31, 1987
stuart-houston-letter-083087
Letter to Steve Houston, August 30, 1987

“Hieroglyphic Miscellany” from 1990

David StuartLeave a comment

by David Stuart

Here’s a small item that I circulated to a few colleagues way back in 1990 called “Hieroglyphic Miscellany.” I hadn’t looked at this in many years, until I found it among some of my papers yesterday. I thought it might be of some interest to colleagues and students, so it here goes on Maya Decipherment. The somewhat random notes include a few tidbits:

(1) My first outline of the evidence for the so-called “doubler” mark in Maya script — the two small dots that indicate the repetition of a syllabic or logographic sign.

(2) Further development of the reading of the tza syllable.

(3) Notes on the deity names that appear on the Yaxchilan inscribed bones, described in another recent post here on Maya Decipherment. The idea that Yaxchilan’s Lintel 42 actually mentions these or similar bones seems far less likely today — that text rather contains a reference to the conjuring or manifesting of the same gods named on the bones.

(3) A brief presentation of the rationale behind the KAL decipherment for the “cauac-skull” logogram that appears in the title kaloomte’. At some point soon I would like to post a full discussion of the many variants and forms of kaloomte’ title, given how wonderfully complex it can be.

Hieroglyphic Miscellany 1990 (pdf file)

HM1990coversheet

US Premiere of Dance of the Maize God

David StuartLeave a comment

The 2014 Maya Meetings in Antigua saw a preview of the extraordinary new documentary film from Night Fire Films, Dance of the Maize God. The US Premiere will take place this coming Sunday, February 23, at 4 PM at CineFestival in San Antonio, Texas.

An announcement from Night Fire Films:

Night Fire Films is pleased to announce their new feature length documentary, Dance of the Maize God. Like their award-winning 2008 documentary Breaking the Maya Code, the new film explores the loss and recovery of ancient Maya culture – in this case, how royal painted vases, almost all found by looters, have transformed our understanding of the ancient Maya. The film explores the complex issues surrounding the excavation, study and exhibition of ancient Maya art.

Following a sneak preview at the UT Maya Meetings in Antigua, the film will have its U.S. premiere at the CineFestival in San Antonio this Sunday, February 23rd. In March, it will be featured at the Tulane Maya Symposium and at the International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal.

To read more about the film, view a trailer and see the latest screening schedule, please go to: http://nightfirefilms.org/films/dance-of-the-maize-god/

The filmmakers will be traveling throughout 2014 to screen Dance of the Maize God at festivals, symposia, museums, universities and community organizations. We are hoping to accompany these screenings with panel discussions involving a wide range of viewpoints on the study and exhibition of looted art.

If your organization would be interested in exploring the possibility of a screening, please get in touch with Producer Rosey Guthrie at guthrie@nightfirefilms.org.