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 San Bartolo, Guatemala.[1][2] Maya writing was in continuous use throughout Mesoamerica until the Spanish conquest of the Maya in the 16th and 17th centuries.
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.
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Mayan writing consisted of a relatively elaborate 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. As of 2008[update], 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.[6]
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 (similar to Korean Hangul syllabic blocks). 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 manikʼ or as the syllable chi.
Phonetic glyphs stood for simple consonant-vowel (CV) or vowel-only (V) 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 ([ʃolteʔ] 'scepter') which is CVCCVC. When these final consonants were sonorants (l, m, n) or gutturals (j, h, ʼ) they were sometimes ignored ("underspelled"). 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 [kah] '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.
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.[9] Sometimes the title is introduced by an adjective kʼuhul ("holy, divine" or "sacred"), 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".[10] 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, Marcus (1976) 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 (capitals) (Tikal, Calakmul, and other "superpowers") were generally first in the region to acquire a unique emblem glyph(s). 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 (Altun Ha, Lubaantun, Xunantunich, and other mid-sized cities) 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 (towns) 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.[11] This model was largely unchallenged for over a decade until Mathews and Justeson,[12] as well as Houston,[13] 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 Stuart & Houston (1994). 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" (expressions like "a person from Lubaantun"), 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.[14] 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.[15] Recent investigations also emphasize the use of emblem glyphs as an emic identifier to shape socio-political self-identity.[16]
Over 90 percent of the Maya texts can now be read with reasonable accuracy.[3] As of 2020[update], at least one phonetic glyph was known for each of the syllables marked green in this chart. /tʼ/ is rare. /pʼ/ is not found, and is thought to have been a later innovation in the Ch'olan and Yucatecan languages.
The goal of encoding Maya hieroglyphs in Unicode is to facilitate the modern use of the script. For representing the degree of flexibility and variation of classical Maya, the expressiveness of Unicode is insufficient (e.g., with regard to the representation of infixes, i.e., signs inserted into other signs), so, for philological applications, different technologies are required.[44]
Human-readable glyph names, combined with smart component placement, automatic alignment of diacritics, mark positioning, and Unicode 7 support, make Glyphs the number one choice for multilingual font development. Why stay monochromatic? Add color to your typographical life with the built-in multi-layer preview and specialized editing tools. Glyphs can export layer fonts, Microsoft-style color webfonts or Apple-style emoji fonts. Watch your words form in high resolution. The edit view doubles as a text editor, allowing you to draw, edit, space and kern your glyphs during a word context instead of isolated in windows. You can also download Principle 6.10 for mac.
Inthe jungles of southern Mexico and Central America, the ancient ruins of theMaya posed such a mystery. They revealed a civilization of stunning achievements,created in isolation from Europe and Asia. Their cities were full of strangeinscriptions, fantastic, twisting forms called hieroglyphs. They were carved onmonuments and objects, painted on pottery and written in bark-paper books.
NARRATOR: In the 16th century, the flames of the SpanishInquisition scorched the New World, decimating the Maya civilization. One blazewas ignited by Diego de Landa, a zealous friar, bent on destroying one of themost original writing systems ever invented, Maya hieroglyphics.
WILLIAMFASH (Archeologist, Harvard University):The hieroglyphic records have so manystories to tell about just who the actors were on the stage of Maya history andwhat the major events were.
LINDASCHELE (Epigrapher, University of Texas,Austin/Deceased 1998): Thoseglyphs give the Maya 1,500 years of history, written in the words of theirancestors, not in the words of white people from Europe.
Almost1,000 years later, a Spanish explorer named Jose Calderon stumbled upon thejungle city of Palenque. Inside its abandoned temples, Calderon and his menfound huge stone tablets carved with figures and hieroglyphic writing.
NARRATOR: As news of the strange texts spread, Frenchartist Jean-Frederick Waldeck traveled to Palenque, in 1832, to sketch itshieroglyphs. Believing that Babylonians, Phoenicians or Hindus had built theMaya cities, Waldeck's drawings even included Indian elephants. 2ff7e9595c
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